Please, somebody help me before I take the hammer to my computer. I'm using the P4 renderer in P5, and I cannot for the life of me get a decent looking metallic reflection. Take a look at the sample pic. On the left is the original in P4, on the right is the P5 version. Same pic, but the one on the right is a pile of arse biscuits. How on earth do I make the reflections nice and contrasty instead of washed out and bleah? Please help before my head of beautiful hair is reduced to a bald stubbly dome. Remember, I'm using the P4 renderer, so none of your fancy P5 stuff, please. Thanks in andvance.

In p5 the reflections are different. My best results are from turning off the check box for diffuse color effecting the reflection map and setting the diffuse color channel to black. Then set the color of the reflection map at the alternate channel where the node is attached. Its ok to leave the effected by lighting on.

i got the same problem making metallic reflections in P5..

Can you say that again in English, please? I'm looking at the material room and I can't see what you mean. hangs head in shame

For this...

Try this. The image map used is a free RDNA one... DNAbluesteel. If you use your existing one, you can probably get more close to the colour you want. And... arse biscuits. Haha. That's so descriptive. God I love Yorkshire profanity!

thanks....will try

Karen - many thanks. Can't claim originality on "Arse biscuits", though. I heard Jack say it on Father Ted and I nearly bust a gut laughing. :)

I tried it, Karen. Didn't work. Waaaaa! :(

Hmmmm. Call me crazy, but I like the one on the right better.

Maybe your lights need some slight adjustment? Have you tried adding a weak spotlight to point at the trousers?

And, perhaps, don't forget to check the "use raytrace" box in the render engine... this mean you should also use the firefly render !

Sorry, forget to use the nudity flag for the picture above... But can we told this is nudity ?

Thanks all, but the point is this: The two scenes are identical. Lights, pose, materials, everything. All I want to do is find a way of reproducing the harsh metallic reflections in P4 without using Firefly. **** Karen, the lights shouldn't need any adjustment; they're the same ones I used in the P4 scene. It's not the lights which are the problem, it's the way P5 uses materials. It seems there's a basic difference in how reflection maps are applied. It may be useful for Firefly, but it's next to useless for P4 renders. The body suit has a texture applied, so changing the material colours will screw that up good and proper. semidieu, thanks for the tip, but I did say I was trying to do this with the P4 renderer. I know it's possible with Firefly, but that's not what I was looking for.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/freestuff.ez?Form.Contrib=volfin&Topsectionid=0

Hmmm. *scratching head* Difficult, because I don't have P4 installed so I can't compare directly. You might have to just play around with the nodes in the material room. Try increasing the size/intensity of the highlihting, etc. You could also try downloading some free metallic P5 materials and see if you can work from there. Volfin has one in freestuff - change the raytrace node to a spheremap and reflection map. Mapps also has some good ones at http://www.freewebz.com/mapps but it looks like he's exceeded his bandwidth for this month :-(

Then... i supposed you tried to check (or uncheck) the "ignore shader tree" ?

semidieu, you're a genius. Or I'm stupid. Or both. :) It worked! I never thought of that. Now where's that bottle of hair restorer?

ok....now um just curious....sam why dunt you want to use FireFly? u got it right? just curious.......

biggert - I do want to use Firefly, but not on these images. I want to get as close as possible to my old P4PP renderings before I move on to Firefly. It's my way of learning the software. If I can get a handle on how it does (or doesn't do) things, I'm always happier. I like to get the fundamentals right first. The point of this image is, it started life as a P4PP render, and it has to finish as that. Maybe I will make a Firefly render of this image at a later date, but not yet.

I have to agree to disagree as well. The picture on the right looks much better to me. I would also agree that it might be better to just use Firefly. Why not, you have it and it is much more powerful than P4, why learn one and then the other?

If you have moved on to FireFly at this point I do recomend downloading my shaders. Here in the freesection (fast way there click on my name above "mapps" when it pops up the IM message window look at the top it will have view mapps free section click on it instead of sending a message, boom yer there). I've been told that taking appart my mats has helped many figure out how the mats work, which is great, thats what they are for. :-)