Re: Creating Bicycle Reflectors

I agree with Alvaro--it sounds like you're on the right track.

The only other thing I'll mention is that I think the way these reflectors work is by being very good at sending light back towards the source--think about how bright a STOP sign is in headlights. So maybe a trick you could use to give them that extra bit of oomph would be to have a light somewhere behind (and parented to) the camera that just illuminates those reflector objects? That way they'd appear a little brighter than everything else in the scene.

You'd want it to be a spot light with a high Dropoff value, I think, so that the effect dimmed as the camera rotated away... off the top of my head I'm not sure if this would actually have any advantage over your method, or even if it will look substantially different from a slightly incandescent version of the material, but it might be worth a try.