I've been experimenting a bit in the material room, trying to add gloss to stockings. For this image I just plugged "Gloss" into the Alternate Specular and played around with the colors. The result is not nearly as impressive as BB's shader but has the advantage, for me, of being understandable. It also glosses the whole thigh, but in this case because the skirt stops at about the top of the hosiery, it doesnt matter much. I figure I need to work my way up to BB's shaders and masks, so this is just a first step. My question: What can I do with this very basic set-up that would improve it? What's another step for me to start experimenting with? I see things like "anisotropic" and "phong" and a bunch of things in the ray trace area, and I'm going to start throwing these things around to see what happens. But a few hints on what could be used--and what it could be plugged in to--would be helpful....

Use the anisotropic like I did, not Glossy. The word anistropic means not the same in all directions - it is a kind of specular effect caused by many tiny parallel grooves or cylinders, e.g nylon threads. The Glossy node does isotropic (same in all directions) specular effects and is actually just a cheat for a world in which raytracing is not available or undesirable.

If we had anistropic reflections in Poser, I wouldn't even use the Anisotropic node.

Interesting...

OK, BB, I finally got the anistropic render, and yes, far, far better. It took me a while because, suddenly and inexplicably, my Poser Pro 2010 refused to render it--or any other complex figure. It would render simpler things, like the base V4 or some buildings, but when I tried rendering my character, or  any of my other characters, it would start to load textures and then lock up my computer. I'd have to force the computer to shut down, reboot, try again, same result. I finally used my old Poser 7--which worked perfectly. So the problem isnt the computer, or the character, or the various bits of clothing or props--but something screwy in PP 10 itself. Got any ideas?

But meanwhile--I love the glossy look!

Here's the new version of the image, via Poser 7...

Wow...looks great.  A tad plasticy but that's fine.  When will it hit the marketplace?

Sorry to be so late getting back to this--spilled coffee on  my keyboard, then had a bunch of domestic crises (washing machine quit, hot water heater, clogged drain). But things seem more tranquil now...Cedarwolf, I agree the stockings look rather plastic now, or more like latex than nylon, but I'm sure fooling around with the settings will allow variations. And when I have more done, I'll lodge the files somewhere so anyone can grab it. Maybe make a freebie page, learn to do zips. What I'd appreciate--if anyone does grab it--that any further work can be shared too. I want more heel treatments, for instance--Cuban heels, Manhatten, whatever. And I still want to get further into the material room and use bagginbill's expertise to set up a shader, and a mask, whatever...

Meanwhile, I uploaded a new version of the video using these stockings. This is the fourth version, with the gloss added, a stormy background, some voice. It's at Youtube--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvRHdH_Y5hU&feature=share&list=PL315E4254948F9BAF

I'll keep fiddling with it, adding some other camera angles, try to clean up the voice synch, etc......