www.cocs.com/poser/reflectp5.htm

Except my results came no where near that after following it step by step. My reflections seem all distorted and funny lines through it.

Here is my results and my settings I used. Dose anyone know how to fix this, or why i'm getting this results?

The stripey stuff looks like what Poser does with a two-sided surface,
or when you have two surfaces too close together.  Does your mirror
have a separate glass layer and 'silvering' layer?  Have you tried the
tut with a plain One-Sided Square prop, with appropriate material settings?

yes its a one sided prop just like in that tutorial link i posted as well, even the distance from the figure is exactly the same as in the same tutorial. The results is suppose to be a mirror like reflection just those streaky lines i have know idea where they are coming from.

Also, here's a sample of a mirror that works.... check the material settings,
especially the Diffuse and Reflected values.

Thats what I was starting to think was something with the lighting i was basicly using the default lights just to practice with. Let me change that around see what happens. So your saying you should only use one light with reflections facing in front?

You can use more than one light, but be sure none of them are aimed
directly at the edge of the mirror.  Also, only one light should have
Shadows turned on, and the Shadows must be Ray-Traced Shadows
for that one light.

Yep, the streaking is caused by Poser rendering a double-sided object. It's interesting that I rendered the images for my tutorial in Poser 5 and I didn't get the streaking. I wonder if it's the light set that I used or if this is another bug in the Firefly renderer.

I'll have to look at my tutorial and tell people to use the BOX instead of the one-sided square. ;)

My slow @$$ computer still rendering another test scene i'm starting to wonder. I think i used this same tut in poser 6 and I don't think i got any streaks maybe its a Poser 7 thing. Still testing around with ockhams Idea. I will post some more results when its done rendering

JH: The one-sided square works OK.  I did a lot of mirror testing in P7 using the
one-sided square.  It's the two-sided square that should be banned from all scenes!

hmmm still getting those streaky results, i did a render with one spot light but it seems impossible for light not to hit the one side square and cause those streaks does the one sided square shadows properties have to be turned off too?

Perhaps this will give a better standard for comparison......

If you put the spotlight behind the mirror, you will have to turn off
Cast Shadows, and also turn off Visible In Raytracing for the square.

Sigh. Does anybody read (search) anymore? I post this over and over. Makes me nuts.

1) The Poser Primitive One-Sided Square is one sided. The Hi-Res Square is two sided. You cannot see this artifact on a one-sided square, despite what was said above. There is confusion here. If you see this artifact, you are using a two-sided prop. (If you collapse a box to 0 thickness, you just made a two-sided square.)

2) In Poser 5, one-sided or two-sided didn't matter. Starting with P6 and up, you must click NORMALS_FORWARD in the material to get P5 behavior. Without that, which side of a polygon you are on matters.

3) This whole subject, in the context of a "mirror", is irrelevent. Mirrors do not exhibit diffuse reflections. They only do perfect reflections. If you can, in any way, change what you see in a mirror by shining a light on the mirror, or changing how a light shines on a  mirror, you have done it wrong.

Here is how to make a physically correct mirror material.

Diffuse_Value = 0

Specular_Value = 0

Reflect node plugged into Reflection_Color

Reflection_Value = 1

Reflect_Lite_Mult = OFF

Reflect_Kd_Mult = OFF

LAST TWO ARE SUPER IMPORTANT.

Perhaps I misremembered when it was introduced, and when these rendering artifacts started. It's surely in Poser 7, after ToonID.

As far as the normals_forward should be the next option after toonid at least that where it is on my poser 7

Look ma no streaks :D

lesbentley - I assume you're showing me Poser 6 - are you up to date with Service Releases?

Many of these things were added in later SR's

Quote - yay I got it to work thank you bagginsbill setting those settings I think help and thank you ockham for your patients and help as well.

As far as the normals_forward should be the next option after toonid at least that where it is on my poser 7

Look ma no streaks :D

Yes but you still have one of those nasty checkboxes turned on.

See how you can only see the figure where light hits the mirror? That is not realistic.

When you shine a light on your face, do you also have to shine one on your bathroom mirror to see yourself? No, you don't.

yeah I know i was just playing around with them on and off to see what effects it does. I kinda like that fade to black effect on the mirror, my big concern was the streaks I was getting it was driving me nuts lol.

bagginsbill is correct- I tested the one-sided square using a Diffuse_Color of black and a Diffuse_Color of white and I got the same results: a mirror without any streaks.
But, it sounds like the issue has been solved. :)

I agree with ockham- two-sided objects must be banned! Poser renders objects as double-sided, so putting textures on both sides of one polygon is just asking for rendering problems.

What exactly is the purpose of the two sided square, other than to cause all kinds of
rendering problems with new users?  Does anyone that knows better use it for
anything?

Well you can use the two sided square for various things I believe for example load a 2 sided square and apply a material to it such as brick or some other kind of texture to it really it depends on what your making. It seems its just not good for doing reflective surfaces.