Polished Wood
First thing you need to make a polished wood is wood (duuuh) texture. You can download the one I used from
here. Save this image to your hard drive and
lets start.
Open 3d Studio Max, or Reset (File>Reset from the main menu). Open the Material Editor (Rendering>Material Editor
from the main menu or just press the M key on your keyboard). In the Material Editor click the "Standard" button,
in the dialogue that appears pick Raytrace from the list and click OK. The ball that represents the material should have now a shiny spot on it. In the Maps rollout click the "None" button near the Diffuse Color value.
Pick Bitmap from the list. Find the wood texture you will use (the wood picture you have downloaded earlier) and open it. The ball should be all woody now. From the dropdown menu near the "Bitmap" button choose "1 - default"
that will bring you back to the original material. Scroll up to the Raytrace Basic Parameters rollout, uncheck the Reflect checkbox and set value to 30.
That will give your wood 30 percent reflection level (If you set it to 100 percent it will be a mirror and the wood texture would become invisible under it). Now create a Box put a sphere above it, render and behold the reflection! Same technique can be applied to create reflective marble, u only have to change the texture you are using.