I can't get it to reflect properly. Is there any "pre made" mirror-materials out there somewhere? Or can someone show me a setup of a working mirror? The one I have here reflects, but not enough, it looks like it's steamy or something and that's not what I want in this case :o) So.. Help please?

Try turning down the diffuse_value. If it's 0 already, post a shot of your shader ;)

Here's a mirror that works

And here are the material room settings for it. The glossy node and the clouds node aren't really needed in the example pic.

Raytracing has to be on in the render settings of course. For the example pic, the number of raytrace bounces was set to 4 which should be enough unless you have quite a complicated reflective object. I noticed a weird thing when I was setting this up, though. For the example pic, I had "smooth polygons" turned on in the render options. If I turn that off, but don't change any other settings, the mirror stops seeing most of the things that are off screen. I'll post a render in a moment.

Here's what happens with "smooth polygons" turned off. My reflection background (the clouds node) is now showing where the things that should be seen in the mirror are out of the render area.

hey, now that is wierd.... but that could be very, very useful, too....

After a little experimentation, it seems that the mirror won't reflect any object which has "smooth polygons" turned off and is outside the field of view of the camera. In this pic I've turned off smooth polygons for the doors and doorframe of the room. I don't remember having this problem with SR3 so it looks like this could be a new problem introduced by SR4. What a shame. I'm so pleased with the fixes to displacement mapping.

hang on, hon -- I'm having an SR3 person give it a shot just to see....

Cool. That would be useful. Thanks.

Here's an image done with a basic "Pepper's Ghost" material. Pepper's Ghost is a technique where a plane of glass is placed between the audience and the stage in such a way that it reflects a person who is not visible to the audience and that person's reflection looks like a ghost on the stage. The technique works well in 3D rendering. In this image there is a single sided square placed exactly halfway between the two sundials with the Pepper's Ghost material applied to it. The Posette in the background is just a reflection of the one in the foreground. To make this work properly, the real Posette should be well lit, but should be standing in an area that is very dimly lit. I've cheated in this case by using the bug. I've turned off polygon smoothing for everything except Posette and the sundial. In a moment I'll post the material settings.

This is very straightforward. We want no highlights, black reflection background, high transparency and reflectivity. I've bumped the reflection value up to 2, which seems high but also seemed to work better for the image. The ghost can be made more solid by increasing that value or less solid by decreasing it.

Hey, that's a nice trick! Mind if I copy it to my stupid shader tricks section at RDNA?

I don't mind at all. Please go ahead.

Cool, Thanks! Ok, What I'm being told (and I may test it myself tomorrow, just to be sure, lol) is that the same effect appears in SR3. I don't recall it happening there either, myself, but I do want to play with this some, so maybe I play around a bit tomorrow or so. fwiw! lol

Attached Link: http://www.cocs.com/poser/reflectp5.htm

Why, yes, I do have a P5 "mirror" material. :) Just go to my "Making Reflections in P5" tutorial and download the zip file. Or, you could also follow the turorial. --John

OK, that makes me feel better about SR4. I'd feel even better if I hear it corroborated though. It sure is strange that polygon smoothing should do this.

John -- Thank you!!! There's a thread by cedarwolf that could use that link too!! lol I couldn't think of half of them out there -- brainfart... Ajax -- it is weird. Very weird. But weird stuff like that begs to be exploited by weirdos like me, lol....

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THis works great, yet my reflections look like they need antialiasing. Any suggestions?

Can you post some pics? A render that shows the problem and a screenshot of your render options would be good.

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Hmm but if you turn off Smooth Polygons in GENERAL (in the render settings) it doesn't affect anything, does it? I THINK I turned them off in my initial render, but I'm not at my Poser PC now so I can't verify it. I am sure I didn't turn them off for single things though. I thought of doing so, but there were so many parts that I decided to just turn it off in general, to prevent any balloons G At least I though of doing it. And yes, I did enable Raytracing. Should the lights (shadows) be raytraced too?

I don't think the shadows matter. Certainly, mine aren't raytraced but they still work. If you look at my post 6, that image is the result of turning of smooth polygons in the render options, not for any of the individual bits and pieces. It will only stop things showing in the mirror if they are wholly outside the view of the camera.

Ah ok I got it now, so as long as it's in the camera view, it WILL render, even with Smooth Polygons turned off? Weird :o) but Poser's weird sometimes!

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Yep, that's it. I suspect it's a side effect of something that's meant to save time by telling Poser not to render stuff that you can't see anyway. It's just that in this case you CAN see it because of the mirror. What I can't guess is why it changes depending on whether or not smooth polygons is turned on.

To answer at the very first question, i found somewhere in these forum that you could use the "alternate diffuse" to make a reflection. Just plug a "reflect node" to "alternate diffuse" and set the bacckground color... (worked on SR3, not yet tested in SR4) Hope it helps... PS. (Ajax) The "Pepper's Ghost" is great ! Thanks.

in your render settings, increase your pixels samples. That should help

Here is my render. I have the material settings listed by Ajax. Notice the blurry edges where there should be sharp 'boards'. Pixel Samples up at 6.

I sometimes see stuff like that if I have it set on draft instead of production in the render options. You can have exactly the same settings for draft and production, but production comes out clearer. However, since the artefacts only seem to show up in the reflection and not in the rest of the render, I think your best bet would be to increase the quality setting in your reflect node. You'll notice mine is set to 0.2, which is the default. It's faster than having a higher setting, but the reflected image has lower quality. You might try turning it up a little at a time until you see the sort of reflection quality you want.

Thanks Ajax (et al), I will try that!

Thanks all, I am going to save this thread, lots of good tips and trix :o)

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