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I think you're misinterpreting my point. When, for example, you use the Cellular node to generate a pattern, and then you run that into the specular node or multiply with the Reflect node, or mix it with any another, you are using the pattern to drive the light-and-direction sensitive effect.

No, I'm understanding it....that was the sense of my reply, I hope...I'm just having trouble wrapping my mind around it.  I understand I think how the materials behave in the real world, but the intuitive sense to how they translate into the Poser world isn't there for me.  It just "feels" like there is a difference between driving an angle-dependent color ramp, and having a pre-made color design that is dimmed by angle.  I can't intellectually understand the difference, but something in the back of my mind thinks there must be a difference.

Well, actually...there would be, for that!  But there's no reason you couldn't do some color math instead, to shift the colors as the angle changed.  But it still "feels" as if something isn't quite the same, even if I don't actually know why.

Which may not, itself, reflect the materials I was looking at.  As far as I understand, what they call "crushed glass" is tiny chips of plastic partially remelted and flattened.  So the micro-structure is quite complex...a bit like crushed velvet, except my guess is it reflects most where it is flat to the source (the reverse of velvet, which is darkest looking down into the roots).

But does this work out like the old fishscale materials on a micro-scale?  Down at those scales, I know technically some of the sorts of things happen but that is far from being able to handle them intuitively.  My intuition is trained on a larger scale; give me theatrical lighting fixtures and I know exactly how they are going to behave.  Microscopic corner reflectors, on the other hand...!

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Similarly, you could use an image that has the same pattern and drive the same effect. The cellular node is not in and of itself sensitive to light and angles, but does generate an interesting pattern. And the specular node is not in and of itself capable of generating interesting patterns, but it is sensitive to light and angles. When you combine them, you get something with an interesting pattern that is sensitive to light and angles.

Right.  That seems clear enough...that there isn't a difference between making a flat render of a cellular noise shader and applying that as a texture map, or using it in Poser...except it is possible the latter actually leads to longer render times!

And there's no reason you can't have different maps for the different effects.  Or, for that matter, have the texture map a greyscale that drives a color ramp; that way you get back total color flexibility.  (My feeling is actually that tonal shifts, not hue shifts, reflects some of the actual materials better).

But by the same token, unless you are using noise and filters that there is no equivalent for in Poser, there's not that much utility in replacing a function with a map, right?

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I understand that for the "pearl" effect, we need to have the material react to light direction and viewing direction. But it doesn't do that uniformly. It does so in a pattern. While the light sensitive effect is easy to make in nodes, the particular pattern is not. The reason it is not is because the node set in Poser is rather limited. Compare it to Filter Forge and you'll see that in fact Poser's node ops are incredibly limited. The pattern generators are few, and there aren't any image filter ops. With the addition of image filter ops and some more pattern generators, Poser's nodes could generate exactly the pattern found in a "pearl" drum wrapper.

Yah.  The poverty of anisotropic specularity in Poser.  It's there, but so nascent there's not much you can do with it (I've been reading up on almost every thread you've posted to in past year or two.)   It seems obvious to me that in many of these finishes, the specular reflection travels across the tiny ridges that are themselves extruded and folded.  So as you shift the light, each of a hundred little lenticular-shaped highlights would sweep along short paths before being blocked by a fold of the material.

One thing that occurred to me was to somehow detach a normal map from the shadow generation and plug that into the specularity.  I've had a fair amount of luck modeling certain textural effects and rendering them as combined height maps, normal maps, etc., etc.  There's a bit of that on this project (what, you think I'm going to spend the polys on actual snares?)

But that isn't a Poser thing yet.  And it most certainly isn't in Poser 6, which I'm making some small effort to stay back-compatible through.

Basically, though, this has been very informative.  I'm glad I took this sideline because I really wasn't making use of the Poser materials (such as they are!) properly.  I'm already using several of your tricks for chrome. 

But it isn't important to me to try (especially, to try and fail) to make an accurate simulation of a specific vintage drum wrap.  I don't see it worth the time to paint by hand.  I've got plenty of hand-painting to do already on more useful stuff, such as the beat-up "used" texture.  I'd rather use procedurals to as far as they work, and stop there.

After I get done cleaning up some of the UV maps I'll jump back to do the simpler "glitter" texture.  I think I'm gonna plug that into spec channel, tho....rather than have it dependent on the reflection items/map as with your example.  (Unless I'm so tired with all these renders I've gone completely blind, and I'm misreading your example shader!)

Regardless, this has been a lot of fun and you are wonderful for helping like this.