My ground is reflecting too much of what I want reflected.

I'm not sure how to explain it, but as it is, if you just click the "add reflection" wacro for the default poser floor, you get a reflection for sure. but it goes on and on. not like a typical "floor" that generally stops reflecting something a couple inches away its surface. It acts more like a mirror instead of .. i dont know. a shiny floor ? lol

when i see subsurface scattering effects for skin, you can see how the glow goes kind of "deep" into the cube ( or candle in one example ), and then turns off. Thats what I am wanting my floor to do but have no clue how to do it!

If anyone can help I would be so grateful. :)

in the material room , turn the reflection value down . ! gives almost a perfect mirror , 0.4 - 0.7 give a shiny reflection of lower quality.

if you get reflections of reflections you can turn down bounce count in render options .  a value of 2-3 should be good , high values will provide mutliple reflections .

 i know about reflection value but that doesn't change the "Falloff" or depth of the reflection.

in the attached image, you can see the 3d being reflected below the "sanctum" text. 

If i wanted it sitting on a mirror this would be great but I would prefer that it did not reflect the 3d to the absolute bottom of the image. i would even be more pleased if the very bottom of the "sanctum" reflection even faded out ( to black for this picture )

in the attached image, you can see the 3d being reflected below the "sanctum" text. 

If i wanted it sitting on a mirror this would be great but I would prefer that it did not reflect the 3d to the absolute bottom of the image. i would even be more pleased if the very bottom of the "sanctum" reflection even faded out ( to black for this picture )

Check out this thread.  Bagginsbill talks about that phenomena, and gives a solution.

http://www.runtimedna.com/mod/forum/messages.php?ShowMessage=266073

 yeah that looks like what i'd want! need to give it a try. thanks :D

 ok  actually this seems to work fine on the ball in the examples but i'm still getting the 3d reflecting all the way down like i don't want.

Quote -  ok  actually this seems to work fine on the ball in the examples but i'm still getting the 3d reflecting all the way down like i don't want.

Work your way down. He showed me an example of it on a floor.

The extreme version of what you seek (as shown in the 2D) is possible, but not going to come alone from a realism shader. We need to violate reality for this. Not a problem.

Still we'll base it on the Fresnel effect. The Fresnel effect says as your viewing angle changes, the amount of reflection changes. Surfaces facing directly at you reflect LESS than surfaces facing 90 degrees away from you, towards the side.

In order for that to happen, you need to be using a wide-angle camera, not a telephoto. You should set your camera focal length to no more than 35 mm. I used 30 mm and it worked quite well to produce visible Fresnel variation in reflection from the floor.

However to get the extreme gradient you are looking for, we have to help it along.

I don't know how your math skills are or how comfortable you are with nodes, so I don't know how to proceed; the choices are, I tell you the math and you run with it, I show you screen shots and discuss options, or I just give you a shader.

Also there is much variation possible within what you've asked for.

I'll post a few variations - you tell me which you want.

Poser is not so good at this, but you could render really large, then reduce it in postwork - would be less grainy.

Click for full size.

 i really like #1 and #3 LOL

I'm comfortable with nodes, but uhm.. math lol. i have a hard time adding 2 double digits together. been out of school too long.

oh god im so giddy. I wasn't sure poser was capable.

 oh oh you ninja posted before me!.

4 and 5 are cool but i assume those just bump/displacements?

#3 is definitely what im going for.

Yes the last two are just #3 with bump. You get the idea.

You will find that #3 is exteremely sensitive to viewing angle - either tweak your camera position/angle, or you can adjust numbers in the shader.

The Math:Gain Value_2 controls the falloff zone size inversely - the closer that number is to 1 (.9, .95, .97, .99, .999 etc) then the tighter the falloff zone is.

The Math:Pow Value_2 controls the location of the falloff zone within the general gradient produced by the Edge_Blend.

I use Pow instead of the Edge_Blend Attenuation, because the Attenuation internal function is not mathematically what I want most of the time.

 you're a god :D thank you so much for the help and free shaders :D 

thanks, bill.  poser has a pretty good edge fall-off shading function (edge blend), but
until this thread I hadn't seen a good description of depth or distance fall-off shaders.
the poser depth-cueing function may not work well for this, in case anybody asks.

What's that, Miss Nancy? This is not a distance fall-off shader at all, nor is it a depth fall-off shader. In either case I would have used the P node.

It is an Edge_Blend fall-off shader, which is based on reality.

The variation in reflection comes from viewing angle here, not from distance or height or anything else.

Thanks for this Bill - I'm new and missing something.

When I add a 'Reflection' wacro I get a default "glossy" plugged into "reflect" into "Reflection Color".

Where am I looking for "Math:Gain" and "Math:Pow" and what are they plugging into?

Uhh - the zip file above contains the complete shaders. It does not involve the Reflection wacro - I have no idea what that does, other than it isn't what I want. I don't use any shaders or shader building wacros that come with Poser.

You should download the file, removing the .doc extension so it is a .zip file. Then unzip its contents into a folder of your choice in a Poser runtime, under the materials library.

Then load one of the materials.

Ah, I get it - thank you!
To add more of a gloss to the floor or to change the floor to some other image file besides black - a few things I've tried haven't worked, where through the shader setup can I make those modifications?

In the PoserSurface, change the Diffuse_Color to whatever color you want. Then increase the Diffuse_Value to control how bright that color will be.

If you want to use a texture image, then set Diffuse_Color to white, and connect an Image_Map node to Diffuse_Color, with the image you want loaded into it. Adjust Diffuse_Value as you see fit.