[Brian Jones]

what else is in the scene (for the ball and ring to reflect)? If nothing (just an empty scene otherwise) then the black has nothing to reflect but black so you get nothing. It should reflect the sphere if it’s in the right position to do so. That’s what the environment channel is for, place a picture in it to fake having a whole real environment. But that’s a huge topic in itself. Check out some of the materials here https://www.maxon.net/~deepshade/ (particularly the metals) and take them apart to see how they’re built.

[Brian Jones]

because you are using the default light it’s not going to help, unless you move the default light (Display/Default Light). The default light is right where the camera is, so no matter where the camera goes the light goes. As your camera rises it sees the ‘grass’ more and more directly and the reflected light gets brighter because the grass plane (circle, whatever) is more and more lined up with the camera and light.
Simplest to just put in a real light so the angle of the light doesn’t change all the time but if you had to you could also use a material with the same color in the Color and Luminance channels.

[Brian Jones]

Yeah that would do it, for the grid try a step effector Transform Mode – Absolute (or Remap), Color Mode – On, U Transform – 100 %, multishader still Index Ratio

[Brian Jones]

yes, almost all values can be keyframed but Automatic Keyframing is not turned on by default. You can turn that on (Autokeying in the Animation menu amongst other places) or keyframe by hand by option/alt clicking on the open circle beside the attribute you want to record.

[Brian Jones]

With Sketch and Toon you can turn off the S&T for an object by adding a Sketch Render tag to it and uncheck Allow Lines and Allow Shading (or Exclude the object in Render Settings/Sketch and Toon/Render). Can’t turn off the Cel Renderer for one object.
Are you using a light above the scene or just the default light?

[Brian Jones]

index ratio doesn’t work that way. If you have a single object cloned 15 times in a single cloner and a attach a multishader material with 15 images inside it it will put 1 image per clone. The only way (I can think of at this time in the morning), with that setup, to get an image that covers the first 3 then the next 3 etc. is to have only 5 images in the multishader then each image is placed on 3 clones. That’s why it’s called index ratio. 15 clones and 15 images gets 1 clone/image, 15 clones and 3 images gets 5 clones/image….

Either your setup is different, in which case we’d need to see it, or your first post had an error in it and you meant to say you have 15 clones and 5 images in a multishader.

[Brian Jones]

For a simple step through a list of shaders no effectors are needed just the multishader (Index Ratio) in a channel in a material you apply to the object or the cloner. An example using colors rather than images for simplicity.

[Brian Jones]

File/Open or Merge the .fbx

[Brian Jones]

the bevel tool works in point and edge modes as well and what you are thinking about is selecting an edge and beveling that. The bevel works by making new edges but that can only go a far as the next edge/point until the results get to something you don’t want in this case. Try it out on a cube select a single edge and bevel that. The problem is Booles make (unless planed out) usually quite complex edges so you can’t usually bevel very far before the result gets undesirable. It can be easier to just build it differently so you don’t need the boole.

[Brian Jones]

You want the beams visible only where the fog is? If that is true, turn off the volumetric visibility in the light (or turn the brightness way down) and turn on Use Illumination in the Illumination tab of the Pyrocluster material.