I'm trying to create a good believable black latex setting in the material room in P5. Most of the reflections I get seem....muddy. I'm lookin for a nice sharp reflection. Like you get with patent leather. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Settings to try? Or a good tutorial? Thanks in advance

Travler has free ones at RDNA

I would love et good tutorial that explains how reflections work :-) And how to make them The reflections i'v made does not seem to be that good.

Rollike: yeah I have the same problem...mine all seem fuzzy around the edges and I'm sure it's because I'm not doing something right :) Niles: Thanks!! Silly me I didn't even think to look there! :)

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=29476

ShadowDaleCreations' has some amazing leather and pvc materials. Magic Skins - Leather, PVC and Rubber materials for Poser 5 They render really well. cheerio lululee

Half-asleep answer... Look at the Specular Color and associated settings. There's one for highlight size, and you need to keep that small. Specular Color should be white, or maybe with a veruy slight tint.

Black latex? Piece of piss Diffuse set to black, specular to white, highlight size set at 0.0333, reflection colour/new node/lighting/raytrace/reflect, set reflection value at 0.4 Put your figure inside a full 3D environment, ie don't use 90% of poser scenes available because they only have two walls, a floor and, if you're lucky, a ceiling Which is less then useless if you're using raytraced reflections to create realistic latex, raytracing turns the surface of your figure basically into a mirror, if there is nothing in front of the mirrored surface then there will be no reflections, it is as simple as that (background images won't show up in reflections in Firefly so don't bother going down that road) There are several free complete rooms (4 walls, floor, ceiling, windows etc) floating around, off the top of my head try Sam3d's free stuff section Next point - lighting, lighting, lighting Do not use the P4 method of pointing all lights at the figure and background, put a mirror in a darkened room, point a spotlight at it and what do you see reflected? Bugger all because only the mirror is lit Light the environment around the figure, if you're following this so far you have a figure with raytrace mirrored skin (reflect set to 0.4 or so because we don't want a perfect mirror, more the glossy patent/polished rubber wet look effect) standing inside a proper 3D room (not a P4 style backdrop set). One spot and three infinite lights are all you need to pull this off To simulate, say, a room with a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling use a single spotlight situated where you want the light source in your room to be, then use several low powered, non-shadow casting infinite lights to simulate light being reflected off the walls, furniture etc Get your camera settings all sorted out, then position one infinite behind the figure shining at the camera and the walls behind it, the other two should be either side of the figure and slightly to the rear Remember all infinites are set to not cast shadows and should be set no higher than 50% to avoid wash out For outdoor scenes use one of the skydomes, I recommend RDNA's free version, you can use a spot or an infinite as your main light source, your call; then, again, a few low intensity non shadow infinites and/or point a couple of non shadow wide angle spots at the skydome, positioned above the figure so the light from them hits only the 'dome, depends on what scenery props you used

Dude....wow....thanks! That was the most complete answer I've ever gotten in these forums in about 4 years!!! Skye

No worries A few making life easier tips, use Windows Explorer, Powerdesk or whatever to create a new sub-folder in your materials library, name it whatever you want, apply the material settings to any body part then add it to your new materials folder, call it black latex, next change the diffuse colour to whatever you want, save as whatevercolour latex Build up a library of different colours, even different strength reflection settings eg black matte (unpolished) latex, black gloss latex, chrome etc Unlike MAT poses you can apply these to any figure part or prop Create another Material setting, diffuse black, specular black, transparency & transparency_edge set to 1, save, name it invisible (this can be incredibly useful when you can't use the properties tab to make something invisible) If you have a scene set you really want to use because it looks good as a background but it's one of the P4 type - 2 walls, floor, ceiling - load the prop/figure, use the properties tag to make as many parented props invisible as is possible then use the materials room and the invisible material preset created earlier to hide any extraneous parts, what we're after is just the two walls, then rotate the prop/figure 180 degrees and load up the same prop/figure again, sometimes a little use of the trans dials is needed to position the two halves correctly Parent the first scenery set to the second, select the second and save to your libraries, click OK on whole group etc, now you have a full 3D environment to place your figures in This also works with different scene sets, one acts as the background, one acts as the source of the reflections, it's advisable though to use two sets that more or less match

Attached Link: Fast 3D low-polygon props.

But note that pointing lights at the figure is the general custom in a photographic studio. Still, it's worth using a photostudio set lit by an infinite light to give a bit of environment. Gerald Day has a good one, and other good low-polygon room sets, at the linked site.

He's produced a lot of useful stuff, and he has a good eye for getting just enough detail. Not close-up models, but you can put a bit of clutter in a scene quite easily.

You could just have a textured square-prop behind the camera, rather than a full 3D set, and texture with any appropriate photograph.