Hello!
Ah, here we go, there was indeed something wrong with the material I selected in the max environment. I removed it and placed the hdr in a CoronaBitmap again and now it's working the way it should. I can confirm that "Spherical" was the option selected, however, I think you're right concerning the material/environment bit, there was something weird about that.
You've asked about thickness, the "thin" option is indeed checked. I unchecked it, and now it produces a new problem I will describe below:
- now the bottle looks like there's a smoothing group or normals issue. The actual bottle mesh is from an .STL file, taken directly from autocad from what I know. I had a lot of trouble with it, mainly the fact that when I add modifiers that change the mesh structure, like Push or Shell, it loses its' smoothing and becomes jagged. I tried smoothing it, I tried checking the normals, resetting them, resetting the xform, STL checks, nothing worked. Every time I add a shell modifier it messes up the mesh. You can see it in my upload if you look closely. Interesting though that the effect cannot be perceived if "Thin" is checked.
Regarding the instancing bit, I'm not sure, to be honest, it just seemed to work this way, but I don't think I actually get what you're asking me, without an example.
I'll upload the scene here, if you'd care to play around with it, I'm fine and there is no hurry, I just want to learn something solid out of this.
The scene itself is really simple, just two lights, the bottle elements and the hdr map. I will add the hdr map too, so it can look the same, but I have no problem in anyone changing it.
Here is the scene in a wetrasnfer link ( I'm not sure I'm allowed to add links here actually, haha ). I saved it for max 2014, I use 2016 right now, and Corona 1.4:
https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/35f7f649ac2b519302294a5a21af9d7420160707001103/4ce049b2de0fd3af2e7271d4d1b1c71420160707001103/a612d1Thank you!