Hi everyone.

Let's see if I even can explain this.

I have a Poser 2014 Pro scene set up and I'm using a mirror in it. The mirror works perfectly, but I noticed one thing. The floor in the room has a semi-reflective surface, and this reflection isn't picked up in the mirror.

Did I miss a setting somewhere?

Thanks
Ford 

??? # of Ray Trace bounces ???

It's currently set at 6.

Try increasing ???

Re-rendering at 12 now :) I'll post back

No difference, still the same.

try full reflective on the floor and see if anything changes ... ???

Just guessing here

4 bounces should be enough from what I know. The setting even says "1 or 2 for reflections"

I vaguely remember something about this from long ago. the Reflection of a reflection thing. I'm not 100% sure Poser can do it right. Same with reflection of displacement maps that at least at some point was wrong. Something about it being calculated at render time and if the mirror is the first thing rendered (as it would be with a reflecting floor), the renderer doesn't yet know that the floor also reflects when it encounteres it in the mirror?

 

I may well be way off but I'm sure i've read something about this issue earlier. I just don't remember if or what the solution was...

OK I just did a test render and while I remembered some things right, I was also wrong on other points.

Poser (PP2014) CAN do reflections of reflections. But it can't do a reflection of a displacement (as it's clear on the floor... I forgot it had THAT much displacement on it but it illustrates it well.. The ball in the mirror is NOT embedded in the floor as the "real" ball is, but the floor does have a faint reflection and the mirror reflects both the ball and the reflection of the ball once more. This is with 3 raytrace bounces.

Ah.. thanks to the both of you! Is there any way around this? Simply not choose a floor with displacement? :)

Blimey. Is the "can't reflect displacement" bug still not fixed? :( 

You could try plugging the floor's displacement map into the bump channel instead - that may be enough for your purposes, assuming the displacement effect isn't an important factor.

Sounds like a good idea! I just can't find any such setting.. I've even tried not using displacement maps in render settings, didn't help. Here's the floor material setting:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ejbydg1cex9dc00/poserfloor1.PNG

There's no reflection in that set-up. No displacement either, but that's moot...

Are you sure you posted the right material?  

handling reflections related to displacements is dealt with in the RayBias setting of the reflect node. The value is related to your unit-settings, default is 0.3" apparently.

BB and I had some discussion about this parameter, a few months ago. I couldn't trace it back for the moment. But raising / lowering might have some effect, it shifts an object towards the camera (?? if I recall correctly), then calculates reflections, etc.

@EnglishBob, yes, sadly I'm quite sure, I tripplechecked it just to be sure. I couldn't see anything.

@aRtBee, I'll check to see what happens!

If that really is your floor material, then you won't get any reflections. However my awesome Google-fu reveals that you're using this set: Design 14 by Arrin which shows a reflective floor in the promo renders.

Something has gone wrong somewhere...  

Your Kung Fu is strong! I'll need to redownload the original and check, but I can't see why it would be a problem with it, specially as the reflection (as seen on the promo renders) works exactly the same in my renders. It's just the mirror doesn't show the reflection.

Adding a reflect node to the displacementmap and playing around with raybias did actually give reflection. It's just not the same color, and didn't seem to change when I changed to white from the default black. But still, it's better! 

Re-rendering my scene with a Poser box that I put both displacement and transparency on just for the fun of it. (used a weave procedural and hooked that up to both the displacement and transparency channels) I also changed the rayBias on the mirror from 0.0125 to 0.1250 and it looks like it did the trick. Both the displacement and the transparency renders in the mirror now. I did change the raytrace bounces to 5 to make sure the transparency would render properly (the render setting says "4 for reflection through transparency" and I then used one extra just in case :))

So the verdict: PP2014 CAN do reflections of reflections. And it CAN do reflections of displacement. IF the RayBias is changed from its default setting of 0.0125 to something bigger 

Yup, the rendering of displacement was fixed way back in P6.  :)

bounces should be set as high as possible. Nature does not put a limit on bounces.

The only reason to reduce the value is to speed up (test)renders at the cost of artifacts. And unless you run a 1990 steamengine on charcoal, there is no need for that anymore. If you can affort to render with SSS / IDL, you don't need the bounce-reduction-speedup.

Use the Dimension3D script to use a value of 99, in case 12 is not enough (the attached image required 4 per looking glass, hence 20 in total. Image made in Bryce 2, some 20 years ago.)

Even without a steam powered 486 with a dead hamster inside I'd still say that reflections (and IDL/SSS) takes up an ungodly amount of time to render.

My computer isn't ancient, but it's not brand sparkling new either. It's a pretty average intel i7 with 8 gb ram. And it took .. hmm well I didn't time it but I'd say 20 minutes to render that test here. 

I tried your render settings with the high amount of bounces, but I must admit that the only place where I could see any difference from my normal 3 bounces... was on the render times which multiplied into the absurd.

So unless you really NEED something like a row of mirrors all reflecting onto themselves.. I'd say 3-4 bounces is sufficient.

And Bryce isn't Poser ;) Completely different render engine. And even slower than Poser ever was, too ;) (but unsurpassed for stuff like that, I grant you :))

well, you know, it's a MAX bounces setting, a cut-off, Poser is not making up bounces which are not there. So when there is more render time involved in higher settings, the bounces are there.

This is where I'm coming from:

Test: Andy with reflective mat between 2 mirrors, all settings and time through D3D-script

bounces =  0: 20,7 sec (raytracing disabled)
bounces =  1: 21,7 sec, artifacts, incomplete reflections
bounces =  4: 22,7 sec, looks fine
bounces =16: 22,7 sec, same result as above

repetitive renders with same settings reveal a spread of +/- 1 sec.

SSS off, IDL off, Andy is just diffuse+reflection, mirror is reflection only. Poser default lights, mapped shadows.

Quote - Yup, the rendering of displacement was fixed way back in P6.  :)

Not on mymachine - but, getting OT...