can anyone tell me how to get a polished wooden floor look in my renders?

any link to a tutorial would also be appreciated

Do you want to use it on a prop or do you want to create a polished floor?

Ift you have the prop, use a glossiness of  70% and add some reflection, about 10%.

If you want to create it google for a wooden floor texture, create a plane apply the texture and apply glossines and reflection.

This free software creates wood textures:

http://www.spiralgraphics.biz/ww_overview.htm

I found it diffiuclt to get the correct tiling proportions on the plane to make it look real.

For added realism try creating a greyscale bump or displacement map.

thanks

sorry for the double post but:

im trying to get a mirror to work in a render. Unfortunately, it wont work.

what are the surface settings to get a mirror to work, and what lights might i nee to put on it?

The mirror doesn't need lights, the objects being reflected need to be lit on the side you will see in the mirror. Are you rendering in 3Delight or OpenGL? Mirrors need 3delight/Software rendering. Reflection strength should be non-zero, with no map applied to the colour.

ahhh, so the light needs to be on the reflected side, thanks