I made a great beach scene, and put Irina waist deep in the water.  I added transparency, translucense, refraction, and reflection to the water.  However, I keep getting weird bright rectangles and other stray items on the water as shown.  I was wondering if this would disappear once I add in a slight bump or displavement for ripples in the water?  Thanks, -Starkdog

are you using IBL or something? It almost looks like a reflection of windows or similar, like from a building.

First, I guess you're using the cloth plane or another multi-polygon surface for the water.  The reason I say this is because the artefacts you're seeing are due to Poser shadowing the polygons.

You can cure this by adjusting the Shadow Bias on the lights and the object itself. To adjust the ones on the object, take a look at the Reflect Node. Ziggie posted a solution some time ago which went like this: Quality - 0.1, Bias - 2.0.

You could also use the Single Sided Square instead of the water plane you're using, unless you need modelled in features such as waves and ripples, which can be simulated by displacement anyhow.

I had the same problem with an image I did of the 1936 Sedan from DAZ, when I used raytraced reflections - the car is supposed to be shiny (duh!), hence hte raytracing; set your view for "Wireframe" and see if those rectangles don't match the polygons of your water. It happens when smoothing is on on a surface that has relatively large polys, from what I can see; you might need to use a reflection map, instead.

it's hard to tell what's happening there, but it looks like there's some kind of mix-up between refraction and reflection, as if the normals on the "water" surface are pointing down.

Cool, Thanks for the fast replies.  The scene I'm making is huge, to allow for panoramic views.  In the attached pic, the figure in the middle of the beach is V3.  The water is a grid of about 3800 polys.  In fact, the sand, walls, sidewalks, street, and water come in at just under 10k polys.  I'll definently be using a bump/disp map to add ripples in the water, and the sand as well.  I still need to add in some palm trees, and other beach-side props, as well as a skydome.  Hopefully the skydome will help the water look awesome.  Thanks, -The Starkdog

Attached Link: Thread Link: Looking for sand displacement/bump map

I had the same problem. I never figured out what it was. I was using a single sided square. But with a good sky dome and busy water, people don't notice the artifacts any more. I did some experiments to isolate the factors but it's a really complicated bug. There is clearly something wrong with Poser's reflection and/or refraction code. I don't understand why it has so much trouble - these are 25 year old techniques.  The raytracer in POV-ray never has these kinds of stupid problems with reflection and refraction. If only Poser scenes would import into POV-ray more easily. I'd use it if complicated materials would get translated into POV-ray code for me, but they don't. Sigh.

Anyway, if you look at the linked thread, you'll see a link to my final image in the gallery, as well as all my materials for water, sand, and surf. You may find them useful.

well, i can't help with the squares but i can give you some pointers on making the water look more realistic.

first and foremost do not use transparency. Refraction will take care of showing what is underwater.

second turn off "cast shadows" on your water plain. this wil insure that the things underwater will be lit.

see attached image

oh, and one other thing. she is crotch deep in water, if she were waist deep, the water would be around her naval.

Scaling your scene to at least 1000% (lights, cams, figs, props) would normally be my 1st advice. This is where RayTrace really gets choked in Poser and delivers a ton of artifacts (like with hair or, water). But, looks like you used a skin shader and that might complicate a scaleup. In P5, some (not all)root nodes did not scale and had to be manually renumbered (0.01 became 0.10),, a pita. I had an identical problem in P5 with a water prop that was a tad too lean on polys. It had a displaced surface like yours. Never resolved it. What are your water refraction settings? I'm wondering if you shouldn't use a box primitive for water. This way shadows and refraction should behave all the way down to her feet...Depends on the cam angle, of course.