I finally got a reflective metallic look that I can live with using materials in Bryce and the reflective textures from poser. I'm not totally satisfied, so any advice is welcomed. Notice that the gloves and the upper feet look vastly different than the rest of the metal armor. I have no clue as to why that is occurring. I used the same materials and textures as the rest, using parametric. If the gloves and the part of the boots looked like the rest of the armor I'd be ok with it all. I uploaded an image I made in Poser and a rough render of the character in Bryce for comparison. diffusion 100, ambiance 22, specularity 100, bump 3.3, reflection 52, refraction 100.

Hi Amixiam , It could very well be the lighting. Bryce lighting has so many variables, sun, shadows,sky dome ,and ambient colors, Could that be part of the problem? Excellent Image BTW Hawkfyr

Let me give you a hint. Instead of importing your character into bryce and going through the texturing headache. First create your Landscape in bryce. Render out the image. Then import it into poser as a backdrop image and pose and renderout the final from poser. Useing a similar texture for the ground in poser will yeild a the image you seek. Your porblem is with your lighting and the fact that bryce uses a raytrace renderer. This makes metallics a bit of a problem. As Bryce treats reflections differently depending on angle, sky color, etc.

Amixiam, I think you need to use the "metallicity" setting. Metallicity tints all reflections with the diffuse color of the metal, and is the key ingredient to making metal textures work properly in Bryce. I would try the following settings: Diffusion 45 Ambience 5 Specularity 80-100 Reflection 60 Metallicity 100 (Refraction does nothing unless you're using Transparency) Set diffuse color to a light or medium gray, with specular halo/highlight color very light and neutral (use the option/alt-click to change color via the RGB editor to something like 253/253/253). That will give you blasted-out highlights, which is the effect I see in the poser render. Tone down the specular halo/highlight color to reduce the highlight blast. Make the specular halo/highlight slightly non-neutral (i.e. 251/253/252) to get a greenish off-color caste around the highlight, which can increase the realism of the metal. Just be careful not to get too saturated. In general, materials look very goofy in Bryce when their ambience is set too high. As a general rule of thumb, ambience + diffusion + reflection should always be approximately equal to 100, unless you're going for a special effect. Also, all materials in your scene should have identical or nearly identical ambience settings, or they will appear to stand out from each other. A good ambience value is generally around 5 or less. Higher than 5 and the scene generally looks washed out. You might also try adding a spotlight or two to highlight the man from a particular angle rather than relying on the Bryce sun. Hope this helps, -flick

Thanks all for your help. I am going to try another shot at the reflective metal look again with this new info. I'll probably still render in bryce rather than importing a backdrop image into poser as pnevai suggested...though that would work. I'll repost an image using your guys' suggestions and see what happens...though I kinda like the rough look in my newer post :P Bryan

I agree with Flickerstreak.. Here is an off the wall idea but I have had luck in different pictures with it. Use a light source and remove light by going into the negative, also pick a color for the light that will give it an offset to the color problem you have. I can't help but think the problem I am seeing rests in the part of the picture I can't see.. I think it is coming from shadows of other objects and the sky.. I notice in the picture that the shin has a purplish cast to it, which seems to follow the hand pattern resting on his knee. This leads me to believe that shadows might be the problem. You might also check in the sky settings and see if a color is assigned to shadows. Byrce sky's no matter how tame can add some very nice or wierd effects to a picture. Thats all I can add at this point hope that helps.

What Flicker said :) And - are you using a material with a diffuse map? or a spot color? 'cause the dark grey on the parts you mentioned might be caused by a diffusion map with a dark streak on it. Or like people said, might just be the lighting/reflection on the figure. I notice that the body of the chainmail has a green cast, while the arms do not. You might want to check that. You certainly improved the render over the last one - good work :) can't wait to see the final product. Lyrra