The attached picture was rendered in Vue (the dress is a WIP). It looks the way I WANT sequins to look in Poser 4...LOL. Is it possible in P5 to get reflections like this and still have transparencies without "clear plastic" where the areas are supposed to be transparent? Even if I got P5 (which I'll ONLY get if it's on a deep sale somewhere), I'll never give up P4 since it meshes with Vue 4 so well like this. Can both be run on the same machine? Meaning, do you have to uninstall P4 to use P5? Thanks for the input :o). Laurie

No, you don't have to uninstall P4. Both run together quite well. P5 has an option of using its own Runtime section or the P4 runtime, which does create some subtle confusions for P4. But it's not a big deal...

Nice pic, I like the dress, and the background reminds me of the school pics they took in grade school. I can't help you with your render question, but, as to your other question , no you do not have to uninstall p4, p5 installs to it's own directory. Check CL's website, I think they are still offering upgrade pricing that is fairly reasonable. John

Is it possible in P5 to get reflections like this and still have transparencies without "clear plastic" where the areas are supposed to be transparent? Not as far as I know. Can both be run on the same machine? Yep. I'm testing stuff in P4 after checking in P5 and both work. (Well, as well as P5 can be said to work. Stupid thing forgets how to use MAT files now, on occasion.) My P4 and P5 happen to be on separate drives, but I don't think it's a requirement. That's just how it ended up for me due to hard drive size considerations. Gorgeous texture, btw!

(Rats, came in third in the 17:45 sprint!) ;-}~

No need to kill Poser 4 if you install Poser 5. You can keep your runtime too. Poser 5 can use multiple runtime folders. You can also import pz3 files made using Poser 5 into Vue (may have problems if you use a Poser 5 runtime folder as Vue will only look in the Poser 4 runtime folder). Peggy

I have them both on the same drive and use both, just not at the same time. You can use the runtime from both in P5, also have propack. Check Amazon, heard they were having a killer sale there on P5. Marque

"Is it possible in P5 to get reflections like this and still have transparencies without "clear plastic" where the areas are supposed to be transparent?" Yes, I'm sure you could come up with something that would look very similar to what you've shown. The P5 materials section is very powerful, once you get your head around it. Creating invisible areas contrasted with highly reflective areas is straightforward, if a little tedious. There seem to be occasional places where you can get P5 for $100 and I believe Amazon has it for $150 just now.

Yes, it is possible to do what you want to do.

The shader nodes allow you to set a "value" for things like reflections.. For instance, you can set up a black and white polka dot map, use that as the value for a reflective, apply it to Victoria, and ONLY the black parts of the polkadot map will show reflections. Example above, done only with procedurals and a reflection map. You could, of course, use true reflections rather than a refmap and render with raytracing.

I was playing around with reflect nodes last night, and got a fantastic looking water reflection. Granted, it took longer to render, but it was worth it. Simply attach a light/raytrace/reflection node to the shader's reflection plug, turn on raytracing in the render options, and have at it!

And don't forget that you can copy the P5 figures into the P4 runtime (at least the non-dynamic ones) and export them into Vue as well, for extra added figures to choose from.

I would try using the same Transparency-map as Specular_value-map (inverted).

How do you get P5 to look into a different runtime folder (i.e. the P4 runtime folder) or have it use multiple runtime folders? How do you access this feature?

You go as high as you can in the library panel, until you can see the "Poser 5" folder, then you use the dropdown menu and select "Add New Runtime".