I'm working on an animated/live action short.  I have a scene where a robot character walks across a black reflective tabletop.  All the live action props and actors are reflected in the tabletop, so the robot must have reflections to be convincing.

I'm compositing the finished PGN sequence in After Effects so I have lots of room for manipulation.  I found the easiest way is to dupe my figure, rotate him 180 degrees and make a mirrior image of the original placed feet to feet.  But, of course, the movement is left to right incorrect.  As the top figure's right leg moves, the "reflection" figure has to move its left leg.

Is there some way to "reverse" anination left to right?  Some...easy....way?

I do not quite get your setup.

But make the tabletop reflective with  a reflect node?

Why duplicate the robot??? There is no "second me" behind the mirror either?

Bear with me - I'm a video director/editor still learning my way around Poser. (Poser 7)

If you could, explain how to apply a reflective mode to my figure.  The figure can't have any ground shadows visible so I've been turning the ground plane off when I digitize.

Sorry for the newbie questions.

Searched on-line.  Is making a reflective one-sided square and placing it on the ground plane the way to go?  Is there a way to control the strength of the reflection?  It should be about 50% the density of the figure.

You can use a rectangular prop or the ground plane - amounts to the same thing. Put this shader on it.

Exactly what I'm looking for BB.  I hope it works in Poser 7.  I'll try it when I get home tonight.

My only concern is that I have to overlay this onto the actual shot of the table.  I'm hoping the slight 2% opacity of the surface won't show up as a slightly darker square or I'll have to rethink this.

Read past that - the revised version has 0% opacity. Set full transparency and Poser does the right thing with the reflection - surprising.

Cool!  This looks like a simple fix that will save me hours of previously wasted time.

Well, I guess this is a no go with Poser 7.  I tried your method and got nothing - although I'm probably missing something simple in the process.

I'm assuming that since you didn't mention render settings, you probably are not aware of them. Otherwise you'd reassure me that you used the right ones.

Raytracing enabled

At least 1 raytrace bounce

Operator error.  Got it to work just fine.  Thanks for the help.

I do notice looking at the PNG files that the "floor" is visible as a faint gray square.  This won't cause any problems as the actual table is black and I can match it to the shape of the table using the background frame grab.

Why not just put the reflect node on the table itself?

Good question.

I'm combining the PNG sequence animation with live action footage in After Effects.  This allows me to better blance lighting, grade the background footage and matte forground objects into the scene.  This particular scene has 32 layers of elements, fire, smoke, sparks, bullet hits and many others.  The Poser animation is sandwiched somewhere in the middle of all this mayhem.  The "table" is in the footage of the scene and not a Poser prop.

Everything worked great and the reflection came out perfect, so I'm home free.

Quote - Why not just put the reflect node on the table itself?

it may represent the application of the layered technique.  in early versions, posersurfaces were single layers upon which some blending and combinatorial procedures could be performed.  perhaps a poserobject whose surfaces have separate layers for various channels may be advantageous in some way.

Did you not read his answer? I didn't think it needed further elaboration. The table IS A PHOTO - part of the live action. The rendered stuff is composited with the live stuff. You know, like in the movies?

I wasn't reading thoroughly apparently, so I just walked away... lol

So yeah, ignore me and listen to BB... He's got 99.99% of people beat. He's my hero :o)

The reflect quality is adjustable.

BB used 0.2, and that gives a good reflection.
You can take it to 1, but a the cost of longer render times.

Also, reflecton needs something to reflect = light.
If the light falls at an angle, it will reflect at the oposite angle.
The position of the main light is important to get good reflections.

Think light.
Think light in front of a mirror. :-)
After al, the tiles will become mirrors.