Quote - How do I get them to be metallic gold rather than a dull yellow? What lighting do I have to have?

it usually takes something to reflect, or a Sphere Map to make it look better, if that's what you are asking.

What are your settings in the Mat Room?

Mine or Michael's? My renders weren't done in Poser, they were done in Octane, and even tho it is node based, it's still diferent to work with.

No, not you BR... :lol: Michael. If he can post what his settings in the Mat room are, I could suggest a few no so helpful tips on getting the metallic mat that he wants.

Quote - Mine or Michael's? My renders weren't done in Poser, they were done in Octane, and even tho it is node based, it's still diferent to work with.

BTW where does one find Octane and is it free?

http://www.refractivesoftware.com/

So how does one go about using it with Poser? Is there a plug in or a exporter for the renderer?

According to the website, there are no Poser plugins available, just the following apps:

Autodesk 3D Studio Max

Autodesk Maya

Autodesk Softimage XSI

Blender

Maxon Cinema 4D

Sketchup

Modo

Remember, BR modeled the Arc in whatever modelling program he used, then exported to Octane for final rendering.  Or if the plugin does not exist, it can still use Wavefront OBJ formats.

Hmmm, last post for the night... Okay, will check it out tomorrow. Not sure how but will try tomorrow to read TFM for Octane.

Good night, all!

Quote - So how does one go about using it with Poser? Is there a plug in or a exporter for the renderer?

To render in Octane, you first must export the entire scene as an OBJ, then you can import that into Octane and assign your materials there.

And no, it's not free. It does have a Demo that is NOT time limited, only locked resolution, and image export is disabled. But you can always take a screenshot and paste it into Photoshop or something to crop out your rendered image.

Edit: The plug-ins for Octane from other software is for animation. If a program can exports to OBJ, then you can use Octane to render stills.

Just remember, Octane requires an Nvidia card, as it's fully GPU rendering. I have dual 9800 GT's so it's fairly fast for most renders. All the ones I did of the Arc were under 5 minutes, usually around 3 to 3 and a half tho.

So I'll have to export the whole scene as obj, then use Octane to render, eh? Like to see how that works out with the Ark... including the EnviroSphere.... BRB

Material settings attached.

Thank youl

Downloaded it and worked with it a bit... Reminds me of Blender interface .... EEEeeewwww! Sorry BR, not for me... I like simple... not complicated... Of course after a more hours of playing with it, I'll be saying, Yeah, I like it...

You sholdn't need to export the EnviroSphere, Octane doesn't require it. The "plain" renders of the Arc I did, was the Arc only, nothing else was exported.

Oh ok... Thanks then. I was thinking of exporting the whole scene including the curtains... Still too complicated, tho, for me. Thanks anyway.

@Michaelab: I don't know which Poser version you are currently using, and light setup may become complicated if IDL is not an option.  The best solution I can come up with is including a low intensity IBL to brighten up the room, although IBL works best with exterior scenes.  Let me know which Poser version you are rendering in and I'll try to come up with some useful lighting.

The prior post is just for the gold oranament and angels. for the patterened or engraved, just sub the bump maps included for the granite node.  I used just 3 lights, Rim, IBL, Main.

Had one spotlight shining upward in the middle of the angels very low level.

ThunderStone's method is a good way to fake reflective surfaces under most older Poser versions.  However, by taking advantage of PP2010 IDL capabilities with true reflective surfaces, you can render more realistic surroundings if you chose different camera angles and settings.

Michaelab:

The Ark of the Covenant was a wooden box covered with pure gold. One would expect the Ark to be gold in color and highly reflective. The shader in your above link is for the wooden poles, which were not covered in gold. hborre offers a complex gold shader on page 2 of this thread with procedural gamma correction. BagginsBill has offered a relatively simple gold shader at this link.

If you want the Ark to be mystical and you have Poser 8 (your Posersurface or root node looks like Poser 8), you could put a color and value on the ambient channels to make it give off its own soft light. One of the reasons that the Ark was covered with gold was to make it bright. The brightness represented the Shekinah (glory or bright light) of God. I have seen renders/pictures of the Ark with a flame or other light effect (as here and here) between the two angles to represent the presence of God.

Incidentaly, the wings of the angles were ment to shield people from accidentally seeing the Shekinah of God, which was too powerful for mortals to endure.

The Ark contained the Tablets of Stone (here) upon which the Ten Commandments were written, the rod of Aaron and a jar of manna.

lmk

I have Poser 8 so don't know if following Thunder's settings was needed, but I did and got the attached results. Still not quite there. For Thunder's settings I used 'add' instead of 'subtract' in the Math Functions node. If I used 'add' it turns it a deep orangish gold. Also, for her image, don't know what that was. However, no matter what image I used I got these wavy lines which I'll post my mat settings so you can see.

Thanks for the help fellow Posers. Really appreciate it.

For the wavy lines, you will need to lower the bump input. You shouldn't use Wood as a sphere map background. Wood is not a reflective environ. :lol: What units are you using? Inches? cm? Mine was done in inches as I had mentioned earlier.  Use an HDR image in the image map node that plug into the sphere map.

So THAT'S where the Arc went.... Aliens stole it! lol

Cool image :o)

Well what do ya know! I turned on USA and Raiders of the Lost Ark is on! Saweet!

Have you been able to take a good look at the Ark as it is shown on there?

No, he hasn't found it yet.

Quote - Have you been able to take a good look at the Ark as it is shown on there?

There is some awesome info on building one here http://www.therpf.com/f9/finishing-1-1-ark-covenant-81600/