My mirror ball is not shading correctly - it looks too flat I have a 32x32 UV sphere in blender. I have it set to "shade flat".

What I want is each square face to be clearly defined and visible (like shading flat normally does).

It looks basically correct in Look Dev mode:



However, even though it looks correct in Look Dev mode, when I render it looks like this:


I am pointing a square area light right at the object and that is all I see.  

The white part of the material is glossy so ideally it would create a mirror look (where each face would reflect its background).

The holes are created by an alpha map, ideally the white parts around them would be glossy.

How can I get the "look dev" look, in my render?
The Look Dev mode uses an HDRI which produces the nice reflections in your first image. As the name suggests the Look Dev mode is only meant to develop the look of your model, not for a preview of the final render, that is what the Rendered mode is for. If you want to use the scene's world settings instead of the HDRI preset in Look Dev, you can enable Scene World in the Viewport Shading settings.



In order to use an HDRI in your render, you'll have to set it up in the world tab or its node editor.



Blender 2.80






Blender 2.81