I found out that if you do not place a reflection map in the reflection node of Sudio's material pane, then values for reflection and/or refraction will call up raytracing. I have started a thread at the DAZ forums regarding this and some of us are beginning to explore this aspect of Studio. These are very early tests: The first one has the Painted Valley MilEnviron and I used the lighting that came with the ME...though I am trying to do lighting solely with Studio lights now. I used props that come with the new 0.9.7 version (not publically availabe yet) and a goblet and vase I had made in C4d and imported into Studio.

This was another test just for the goblet. The props are there, of course, so the goblet has something to reflect.

Attached Link: http://forum.daz3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=7996

This is a little star made in C4D. Pointlights are used to do the lighting. Others have posted their own experiments in the thread.

These look very good, but I cant help thinking that you could do most of this in poser 5, true it doesnt have point lights but they could be faked some way.

I was not saying that studio is not good with my last comment I was just saying that poser 5 is good, too. I hope that studio is succesful it is good to have another program for poser stuff. By the way, do you know when the newest version of studio will be available for non-pc members?

Understood about P5. For me, though, there are other aspects that make me like it for the way I work. As for lights, I hate the way you work with lights in Poser from a physical standpoint: namely the lightball. I want a better representation of where lights are, an easier way to position them and that's what I get. I can multi-select materials and apply textures/settings to all of them. I can select any part of any object in my scene and say frame that selection and it fills my work area with that selected part. I can select a body part to rotate and i get circles which show me the actual direction something is going to bend, twist or move side to side - something that makes me absolutely mad in Poser (especially if the hip is no longer in a zeroed position on the axes). Open GL lets me see what I'm going to render better...oh, to SEE the transparencies. I can make a library of anything I want and have it contain all the parts to it...if I create a Goth Girl, the same folder can have her material settings, her clothes, her poses, her lights, any cameras. It can be all one scene or broken up into its parts that I just merge. There's more, but I'll stop for now. :) As for a public release of 0.9.7, keep watching for word from DAZ. It will either be this build or if they find they need to fix enough bugs, it may be a slightly different build. It is a beta, so it is still changing. Cris

thank you.

xantor, Version 0.9.7.8 is now available to the public. You can do the request for download links, per usual, though the front page to DAZ|Studio page. The base content will include some of the Faerie content and environment. You may also wish to look at some of the bundle starters that DAZ is offering as they include more content, Bryce and othere things that may be of interest to you. Cris

Great! thank you!