I have asked this before, but now with the poser 5 I was wondering if anyone had any other answers. I am trying to get the lovely invisible effect that the predator films use. Any ideas? I'm guessing I need to use the refraction option, but I seem to get very little results with this option, and help would be great. Thank you to everyone who helps. All images of what you can do would be great too. Thanks again. Rich

Oooo ... something to try.

I'm not sure if you can achieve the cloaking device's recursive effect with Poser 5, but refraction itself works just fine, once you understand how to set it up. This sort of thing is best viewed in animation, rather than stills.

I'll do a test render to show you what I mean.

"Hey, Karma! Come here a minute ...."

Holy Moly that is Just Waaaaaaaay TOOOooOOoooo kewl! Thanks for sharing :) ladynimue

so how have you done that without setting any of the transparencies or anything and only using the refraction??

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wow thats awesome

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Does this mean that refraction overrides transparency/opacity? It looks AWESOME, L_D!

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Pretty slick! Marque

ooohhhh ... ok that's cool. Thanks LD!

Ah cool Joe. Thanks for the explanation :o) Never tried those refraction thingies on my P5. My puter lacks Ram - or I lack patience to properly enjoy P5. It runs ok though. Only WAAAAY slower than PPP :o)

Refraction does not overide transparency. You would want transparency set at 0 to get the full effect of the refraction. This is cool because you can mix refraction and transparency settings to get different results. Little Dragon has a great looking refraction going on here. Keep in mind that if you have an image imported as the background you will also need to: 1. Create an image_map node 2. Use the "same image" from the background as the "Image_Source" in the image_map node 3. Plug the image_map node into the Background channel of the "Refract" node 4. Set the background color in the Refract node to white so that the image will pass through. > You must do this because refraction can not see the background to include it in the calculation. The steps above match the background for refraction node with the background in the document window. It works this way for anything loaded into the document window background. So... If you had a movie in the background you would want to use the same movie plugged into the "Refract node" background channel. Hope this helps. Joe www.3-AXIS.com

I suspected that refraction wouldn't work on its own with an imported background image, just like raytraced reflections, but I didn't feel like testing it. It didn't occur to me that you could simply force it by plugging an image_map of the background into the node's background channel. Thanks for the tip. The first animation (the headshot) used a textured backdrop. The second (the walk) used one of As Shanim's environment props. ernyoka1: I had trouble using refraction at first, until I realized that it effectively created the illusion of transparency on its own. Using real transparency on refractive materials was weakening the desired effect.

No problem-o on the tip-o. Glad I could help. It works the same way for raytraced reflections. All the best, Joe www.3-AXIS.com

Little Dragon!! That's amazingly cool!! Now I wish I knew how to animate!

Attached Link: Thread with node screenshot.