I feel for Khai. The material room is an annoying.... grrrr.

In fact, every time I try to follow shaders in the forums, I get more frustrated.

Take this one, for instance:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3817511&ebot_calc_page#message_3817511

If I follow it precisely, I get a nice, shiny, black ball.

I was so puzzled by this that I downloaded the freebie that the OP created that is supposedly pictured in the thread.

The shader is precisely the same as given in the thread, precisely the same as what I re-create.

And I get... a nice, shiny black ball.

I have no idea why, and I have no idea how to even work out why.

(I've tried changing lots of parameters just to see what happens. Nothing works. But using trial and error, I could be at it for years.)

So I can only conclude that either my version of Poser has some odd bug that randomly prevents shaders from working properly, or my eyes are funny and I'm just not seeing things the way everyone else does.

If I can't even re-create a posted shader, no way in hell am I going to be able to work out even the simplest things on my own. Ever. It's frustrating all right, and more than a bit demoralizing.

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.