Hello I have tried to create a poser character and a hi -res ball with their reflection in it, however when rendered the poser character is very detailed and the ball just is not it does reflect but looks really poor! If I tick the boxes lights and object the detail on the ball looks much better however it no longer reflects. I managed to pull it off once however the poser character was not as detailed as I would have liked.What I aim to do is have a slight bump texture on the ball and then a really nice mirror-like really high res reflection showing the poser character in the ball. Do i just click the ball once, add reflection and leave it like that of is there more I can do ?

Can you post screen shots?

The render settings could be important as well. For reflection, you need ray tracing, with enough bounces for your scene. For one reflection one bounce should be enough, but if you have glass in the scene as well, you need more.

Can you post the material of the ball?

For reflection the camera, mirror etc must be correctly placed too.

Isaoshi that is exactly what I want and I have pretty much achieved it the mistakes I made before was that the lighting was not in the correct place. Is your ball easy to create? do you just add reflection and leave it like that or is there anything else you do to the ball?
I do not tick lights or object options in the reflective section and it reflects a bit. Someone metioned Materials.... I just create a ball and stick with whatever material it is.
If I add a bump is that changing the material? I have seen things called nodes but I have no idea what part to add them too there seems to be ones for reflections , bumps and about 100 other things.I use pictures for my texture/bump (would this count as a material)  Sometimes I add like 20 odd mixed nodes but can't really work out what they do I have a 9000 x ???? render going on today whilst I am at work hopefully it will be done when I get in and I will try to post. It is a manlooking at a ball that does reflect but not too well (we will see when the render is done anyway) it may look amazing! Ideally I want to create a ball that perfectly mirrors its surrounding like the one in the above picture.

If you want a perfect reflective material, such as a mirror, you could download my "Standing Mirror" freebie and copy the material settings.

It's actually quite easy. This is what you have to do in the Material Room:

1. Set the Diffuse Value to zero; the reflective surface doesn't have its own "color"
2. Connect a "Reflect" node to the Reflection input of the main material node - just drag your mouse from the Reflection input onto some free space in the Material window. Poser will ask you to create a new node, chose Lighting->Raytrace->Reflect.

Done.

Oh, and don't forget to render with raytracing set to ON. If raytracing is not enabled, you will not get any reflections.

This is a very simple reflection setup, and not fully realistic. If you want better reflections, there's a complete thread on water, glass and metallic materials with a lot of contributions from bagginsbill. Somewhat complicated, but there's plenty of examples on how to set up a good glass material, or chrome material, etcetera.

SVDL gave you the details for adding the Reflect. The values I used in the reflect node are the default values Poser gives you when you create a new Reflect node. (edit) Oops, not quite, the RayBias default value is 0.3. The setting of 0.5 made no difference to my sphere, though.

I used a Clouds node for the Bump, changing the Sky colour to black instead of blue (only to increase the contrast - the colour itself is irrelevant).

When you first plug your Clouds node into a previously unused Bump channel, it will set the Bump Value to 1 inch. Note that if you don't use inches, it will convert this 1 inch into whatever units you do use, e.g. 0.083333 feet, or 0.009690 Poser units.

In any case, this is too much bump. I used 0.05 inches. Set your units to inches, or have your calculator at the ready!  :O)

Two more details to add to SVDL's advice:-

To see reflections in the ball you only need one raytrace bounce in your render settings. If you want the ball to reflect other reflections (or other raytrace effects) you should permit additional raytrace bounces. The render will only use as many bounces as it needs, up to whatever number you permit.

Finally, to give realistic reflections in the sphere, there must be something to be reflected surrounding your whole scene. I always use bagginsbill's EnvSphere, with a spherical panoramic image or (as in my above example) just a simple ground-to-sky gradient.

Izi

Going back to your post before SVDL, which (I'm sorry) I did not read properly before....

Basically, all the nodes (Reflect, Cloud, etc) you see in the advanced material room view make up a material shader, which is just a way of recording what a particular surface looks like -- or, more accurately, how it reacts to light. (Although you can also define surfaces that are visible but do not react to the lights in your scene).

It can be a purely 'procedural' shader such as we have here, made only from shader nodes without any images, or it can use an image map. Or a bit of both.

Image maps can also be used to control other things like specular highlights, transparency, refraction, reflection, etc etc.

All these things make up the 'material'.

in addition, in poser versions prior to 8, refl_lite_mult is checked by default (bad setting).
it's an holdover from poser 4, which had no reflection, refraction et al.

Here is my latest

The forums here limit your attachment size - you cannot post something over 200K bytes.
Miss Nancy is right on.
Reflect_Lite_Mult should be turned off. When it is on, the ball does not reflect unless a light is shining on it very brightly, which is stupid.

Oh right .... 200 kb that is low low low ! yep I was trying to post 2-3 megs. Thanks for posting the settings screen thats great thanks for all your help .

By the way, Miss Nancy, what did you mean by "in Poser versions prior to 8"?
Were you hinting at what is (or might be) still in development?

isao, it means that they left that checkbox in there since 2001 (P5,6,7), but they've been aware that it's making things tuff for default users.  I attribute the delay in the release of P8 to the extra care and attention to detail by coders and beta testers.

p.s. found another prob that has no doubt been mentioned before, when trying that other guy's set-up with the broad holding the mirror,  the one where it was wayyyy too dark, due to leaving refl_lite_mult checked.  when I tried it with GI enabled, found that, like carrara, the mirror will reflect to the camera what's illuminated by lites and IL, but the mirror surface won't bounce lite rays off in such a way as to illuminate other surfaces.  e.g. like the way they use big aluminium reflectors when shooting beach scenes in movies.  I dunno if there's a mirror surface setting in poser that would do that, probly because the diffuse channel is 0.0 when using refl. node.  if I set it so that refl + diffuse is gtr thn one, then in GI the mirror will emit lite rays, but that's a violation of snell's law or maybe fresnel's law.

What you meant about the checkbox in Poser versions up to Pro was clear enough.

I was only wondering what you meant by the implication that this is already different in Poser version 8, when there is no such version available.

Thanks for the clarification, and for the update on development progress.  :O)

When I tried the above settings unfortunatly my ball came out black and would only reflect light. I found an easier way to achieve what I want. All on basic settings add reflection and make sure lights and object remain unchecked (otherwise it does not reflect). It looks really cool brighter than I wanted but that is because of the reflection white. when I check reflection "object" and "lights" it goes to exactly the darkness I would like but does not reflect. Another problem I have is posting the picture I made using poser and photoshop is 90 MB on photoshop it will let me shrink it to 396 kb minimum this is at low settings "0" how do I get this smaller?

Why don't you just reduce your resolution?  That will generate a smaller file size. 
Also, could you post an image of your material room setup for the reflective ball?

Yes I think I get you so reduce the paper size from a3 - a4 then it may appear under 200 kb if not keep making page smaller.

The only option I have clicked is reflection panel to the right of basic settings (where toon render, add atmosphere etc is). When I say reflection I mean every body part all the probs all my one sided squares etc. I clicked this option once for every part.

I'm at work so I'm just writing a quick note.

What is all this talk about wacros and such? A mirror is simple and I've posted the formula a thousand times. There should be no diffuse reflection, so set Diffuse_Value = 0. You don't really need specular reflection so set Specular_Value = 0. Add a Reflect node and connect it to Alternate_Diffuse.

Search this forum for posts by me, bagginsbill, and search for the word "mirror" and also try searching for the word "chrome".

In general, if you want to know something about a material, search for posts by me using the word or phrase you are interested in. Other interesting topics you'll find I've written about include water, ocean, lake, pond, droplets, skin, teeth, sclera, cornea, glass, fresnel, metal, paint, plaster, stucco, slime, diamond, leather, etc. If you assembled all the posts, you'd have a really good book on materials.

andrewbell... as hborre said, when publishing to a website you need to reduce the pixel dimensions of a large image to a suitable size. This will also greatly reduce the file size.

You can use the Photoshop function: Save for Web. This allows you to export a copy of your image without altering your original image in Photoshop. During the export you can choose a pixel size for the exported image, and if saving as a jpeg you can further reduce file size with the "quality" slider.

I had no idea what you meant by check reflection "object" and "lights" until I looked in the Basic material room settings. I never use this view, because it only shows a limited part of the complete material setup that you can see in the Advanced view.

The two checkboxes that you mention correspond to the Reflection_Lite_Mult and Reflection_Kd_Mult checkboxes on the PoserSurface in the Advanced view, and these should simply not be used. (This advice is from bagginsbill, who knows about these things). Irritatingly, the first one is switched on by default, as Miss Nancy pointed out.

Izi

I had no idea what you meant by check reflection "object" and "lights" until I looked in the Basic material room settings. I never use this view, because it only shows a limited part of the complete material setup that you can see in the Advanced view.

The two checkboxes that you mention correspond to the Reflection_Lite_Mult and Reflection_Kd_Mult checkboxes on the PoserSurface in the Advanced view, and these should simply not be used.

Brilliant I have got the hang of mass relections I did not realise the two checkboxes corresponded to those on the advanced panel. I am now going to follow earleir advice on the type of reflection. Mine is bright white at the moment so it looks like everyting in my scene has a powder coating! however it does look good. To create a different colour of reflection I take it all I will need to do is change the reflection colour from white to blue or something like that . Will try to post pics tonight... thanks for all your help everyone! I am doing a 7000 x something render today HDRI Displacemwent Maps 20-30 +reflections and 10 large textures... I hope my pc doesn't crash .

Reflections can be tinted by certain types of surfaces, but let's put that aside and suppose that you want a perfect (untinted) reflection, such as you would get from polished chrome.

The fact that you are getting a bright white sphere, giving the reflections a "powder coating", means that you have something wrong in your shader settings. I suspect that you still have some diffuse color, or it might be large specular highlights.

Go back to bagginsbill's post, where he says to make sure that you have Diffuse_Value and Specular_Value set to zero (or the corresponding _Color channels set to black). This is important - if you don't do this, you won't get perfect reflections. 

The shader setup that I showed you had a specular value of 1, colour white, but a very small highlight size. That's why you can see the two small white specular highlights in the sphere. It was just what I happened to have set up in my 3D laboratory, and I forgot to change it before doing the screenshot.

(edit) also make sure Ambient_Value is zero, or Ambient_Color is black.

Excellent thanks I will make sure I have these values set also I never thought there was so much that can be learned about reflections.

You're welcome.

Actually, the only thing here that has to do with reflection is the Reflect node that you plug in.

The other things are just other surface properties that you don't want interfering with your reflective surface, so they have to be switched off.

What is all this talk about wacros and such? A mirror is simple and I've posted the formula a thousand times. There should be no diffuse reflection, so set Diffuse_Value = 0. You don't really need specular reflection so set Specular_Value = 0. Add a Reflect node and connect it to Alternate_Diffuse.*

Managed to get perfect mirror like reflections now ! Just what I wanted. I am not in front of pc at the moment but what I found is if I set both diffuse value to 0 and specular to 0 the object comes out deep black with no relections. However if I do either or it reflects.

I managed to do it on the basic settings, clicking on reflection once then making sure objects and lights buttons are unchecked and changing reflection colour to black.  I am using poser pro would this make a difference?

when trying it in advanced I still had no joy ... I am a bit puzzled it seems to work great in basic. I will post my settings on here as soon as I can. I keep finding myself reverting back to basic for virtually everything, Bumps, textures etc. 

I'm way confused by what you're saying. Things simply do not work the way you describe.

Quote - what I found is if I set both diffuse value to 0 and specular to 0 the object comes out deep black with no relections.

That can only happen if you if have one of those Reflect XYZ multiplier options checked and you are plugging the Reflect node into Reflection_Color. Because I was concerned that you might not pay attention to the checkboxes, I suggested you plug the Reflect node into the Alternate_Diffuse where there would be no problem.
 

Quote - However if I do either or it reflects.

There is zero possibility that reflection is affected by the specular settings, unless you happened to plug the Reflect node into the Specular channel, which would also be a bad thing to do. If you plug the Reflect node into Reflection_Color, then the Diffuse settings and/or the lights will alter the results. But if you plug into Alternate_Diffuse, or you turn off those multiplier checkboxes and plug into Reflection_Color, then what you describe is impossible.

Somewhere you're not following instructions, which means there's a difference in your setup that you are unaware of and you're not telling us. The result is massive confusion.

Quote - I managed to do it on the basic settings, clicking on reflection once then making sure objects and lights buttons are unchecked and changing reflection colour to black.

That is impossible. If you set the Reflection_Color to black and plug a Reflect node into that, it is turned off. Black means 0. The color is multiplied with the node. Therefore, 0 * Reflect = 0 - nothing, nada, zip. It is literally impossible to have a node do anything to the surface when it is plugged into a channel with the channel color set to black.

Quote - I am using poser pro would this make a difference?

No, but for best results you should turn on gamma correction in Poser Pro render settings.

If you're jumping between advanced and basic, don't do that! The basic mode only works if that's all you use. Plus, in this case, basic mode is actually more trouble than advanced mode. Basic mode is for limited use in the way that the old Poser 4 renderer did things. It doesn't apply correctly to any of the modern features since Poser 5 and up. Real ray-traced reflections is one of those not-basic things.

Don't even bother showing me this. It tells us nothing about ray-tracing features.

I can see this had no reflection.

I turned off Diffuse_Value, setting it to 0.

A mirror does not simultaneously do diffuse and reflection. It only does reflection. If you have both turned on, then you get a material that does not exist in the universe. It's an interesting effect but not a mirror.

#1 is the non-reflector
#2 is the proper mirror
#3 is the bad mirror with diffuse and reflection. Observe how that black squares show up as red.

Without lights, all diffuse effects generate black.

But since my sky sphere is self-lit (glowing, emitting its own colors from a photo), then the reflection still works.

This is what gets screwed up if you have those checkboxes turned on.

I have a single infinite light from above right.

#1 is the proper mirror, and reflects the scene 100% in all directions.

#2 is with Reflect_Lite_Mult turned on. It only reflects the scene where light hits the surface, and only in proportion to the light intensity. This is wrong.

#3 is with Reflect_Kd_Mult turned on. It doesn't reflect at all because I have the diffuse effect turned off.

Its definatly me thats the confusing one.... I do apologise for this !

In the basic settings post you put on at 4.20 it looks the same as mine however I right click in the gray area under the white box in reflection and enable ray tracing and then it seems to work. The box then says "ray traced" in it and the reflections come out just like mirrors.

I prob have some other option/setting  selected in the advanced panel that is making the render un mirrored.

I will start a new render scene from scratch and use these great tips I have gathered to create a new render and I will let you know the results. Damn I wish I had my pc in front of me!!

Do not - repeat, do NOT - use that Basic view! As soon as you want anything beyond setting a color map and a bump map, it's confusing and you cannot see what you're doing.

ALWAYS use the Advanced view.

if the user wants the ball to have properties of transparency and refraction as well as reflection, it may require the fresnel node.  I dunno if it needs a fresnel node if it's just a perfect mirror.

**bagginsbill I don't know what was happening before but I have now achieved a reflection using your settings exactly!!!cheers  thanks very much to all who helped me. I have started a new thread after the purchase of Vue and I am a little confused !
**