The other day I wanted to get some good reflections on an object but didn’t want to place it in another scene. (I should have, it would have been faster. But at least I learned something new this way…) So I set up a scene with 6 cameras and rendered a cubemap to use as an environment texture for the new object. Turns out it’s not that simple as modo doesn’t quite like cubemaps on the environment. So I had to come up with a new way and created a spherical map, which worked out great…

Cubemap: set up 6 cameras and render an image with each one; assemble in photoshop…
Spherical Map: make a reflective sphere with a good uv layout and bake to texture…

remind me to go into more detail and post some screens…