Could someone in the know tell me what the default UV mapping that Poser 4 uses for its refection maps? It would be helpful to find out the relation it has to the settings in UV Mapper - weather the UV mapping is planer, spherical, cylindrical, etc as well the X, Y, or Z axis?

Poser uses a sphereical environment mapping for reflection maps (Y is the sphere's axis - north corresponds to positive Y). Because it's an environment mapping rather than a UV mapping, it actually doesn't matter how you UV map the reflective object or whether you UV map it at all. What are you trying to do? I might be able to help more if I know where you're going.

Well... I am trying to create a refection map for finger and toe nails - which reflect naturally for each nail. The real question is - does Poser use the one refection map stretching the UVs over all the finger nails as one unit... or does it apply the map many times once for each nail separately. I noticed that the refection maps act quite differently depending on the shape of the model.

The whole approach is actually very differnt to UV mapping. UV mapping would assign a particular part of the reflection map to each nail. The approach Poser uses for reflections is more like a world space mapping, where what you see on the nail depends on which way it's facing and where in three dimensional world space the nail is at the time. If you animate it, you'll see how the reflection changes as you move the nail around. I don't know exactly how they have it set up. That's something I guess only the original programmers would know, since it's only an approximation and there are a bunch of different ways you could do it. The main thing is, if you have two fingers close together in the scene with the nails facing the same way, you'll see almost exactly the same thing on each, just as you would if you had two little chrome objects close to each other and pointing the same way in the real world. If you have the fingernails pointing in different directions, you'll see different bits of the reflection map on them. You might consider looking for advice in Traveler's forum at www.runtimedna.com. He does a lot of work with reflection maps as a way of improving the look of human models, so he'd be a good person to ask.

Quick explaniation... The usual way to do reflection-mapping is putting a sphere (non-visible for you, of course) around the reflecting object, then map an image around the sphere, then filter (using your reflection settings) the reflecting objects colour with the spheres colour from the point of view of the camera ... (this didn't explain it in an easy way, did it?!) :-/

Makes sense to me, Lupus. That's a good explanation. I like it :-) That's how I thought it would probably be done, though I wonder about where you put the centre of the sphere. I'd guess in Poser they probably put it at the local origin of each prop or body part concerned. I'm always thinking in terms of projection vectors and other mathematical things, so I couldn't have explained it as simply as you have. Nice one.

Thanks, I tried to describe it in a simple way, but my english is not helping me. lol The centre of of the sphere would "logically" be at the "absolute centre" of the object (or centre of all objects, when dealing with parented objects).... just one sphere/object ("parent and childs")...

I understand the concept poser uses for the refection maps now. I was wondering how it worked I was a little confused. lol I now notice that regardless how you rotate the object square, sphere or what have you. The refection map stays the same as if you have a picture in a slide projector shinning on an object at all times from the main camera point of view. For example, a white styrofoam ball Well, I guess the best solution is to still use the UV mapping for resale textures products due to the fact you do not know what rendering environment your customer will be using.