WHAT THE HECK???  I came up with an idea of "glowing paints" for a car, did all the settings for the chrome parts for real reflections (I hate reflection maps), and all the setups for the sky, carpaint, and other things to light up and hit render... to my horror, the car looks UGLY except for the glowing... the mag wheels and chrome parts are ugly grey!  When I add a Poser light and set IDL off, the reflections look remarkable.  Anyone know what to do about this??  I don't want a light in the render, I only want the IDL effect to light the scene...

Using Poser9, SP3

...wolfie

Try setting up a specular only light, IDL seems to have no specular component

Bill

Attached Link: A Bagginsbill Gallery Post

Sorry ,we can only help if you show the shader setup for the paint and the render settings.

I always render with IDL and GC set to ON, inside BB's sphere and with a single Infinite light.

All images attached as one image... 1st image is my settings, 2nd is rendered with the light, IDL disabled, as you can see there are some reflection, especially noted from the ground... a stage, 3rd is a specular light (willyb53's suggestion) with IDL enabled.

The mat settings on the 2nd is the car, the 3rd is the chrome wheel.

Crap, I have to go somewhere for a few hours, so I won't be able to reply or look at answers for a while, will reply when I get back.  Thanks for everything guys!

...wolfie

Reflection_Lite_Mult = EVIL

Reflection_Kd_Mult = EVIL times 10

Your total EVIL score is EVIL times 11.

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I used to point this out constantly even when it didn't apply. In this case, it applies, because you're using the Reflection_Color input.

It doesn't always ruin your results, but unless you're me, it seems really hard to know when it does and when it has no effect. Therefore, just turn it off.

A secondary problem is you have a constant for Reflection_Value. Absolutely nothing in real life behaves that way - not even a mirror. The Fresnel effect is cruicial to car paint.

Secondarily, 17 is an extremely low value for IDL. You need a minimum of 40 for even a fair medium quality render.

Hmm, I'm not understanding neither of you, really.

BB, you're saying turn it off, but you have images with reflections and I'm told you mainly use IDL, if that's true, can you explain the settings you have?  If I just set the "value" reflection and disconnect the color, the color turns off and both color and value turns into "?"

Believable3D, are you talking about the "Indirect Light Quality"?  That's what I'm guessing, since you said 17, though it's actually on 16.  In my experience, even on my 64bit quad core laptop, 40 would be a real killer and it would take ages to render anything, my main computer, 32 bit, dual core, would undoubtfully fail, though I'll give it a try.  Can't really remember, but maybe that happens if I set the "irradiance catching" higher, I'll give it a twirl.

Post work in PSP and/or PS might be my only option (one render with lights, one with IDL lights), but I'm hoping I don't have to do that... anyone?

...wolfie

perhaps the Diffuse_Value and Specular_Value should be reduced to 0.0 too. Now there is 100% white or grey Diffuse + 100% specular (no effect under IDL only lighting) + 50% or 100% reflection.

metals need reflection (+specular) only.

car shaders are rather complex.  BB posted candy-apple shader either here or on google site.  snarly also has car plugins in EZMat.  maybe flame could be decal blended over base paint.

Here is BB's cart paint shader.  You can load your texture map into it... 

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/car-paint

Here it is. Either put a color map in, or set the color you want in the Diffuse_Color parameter. (Or both)

OMG!!!  I'm just very happy with this image, though there are some minor things I want to change, I should've set raytracing to 3 or 4 instead of 2 for brighter IDL effect (mainly the fireballs hitting the ground/car, they're really not shining enouch where they're hitting).  I did have a specular light in the scene, for things like the tires/buildings, I think it looks fine.

BB, THANK YOU THANK YOU! LatexLuv, thanks for explaining what he was talking about, it slipped my mind to look there lol!  WandW, thanks for that link, BB, thanks for the shader sample.  I do know a lot about simple shaders like cars, furnitures, but the complex ones I've not been playing around with, still lots to learn here.  I'm gonna check out your shader you just displayed though, see what it does :)

Man!!  Look at that chrome and car paint!  Just wow lol, Though this image looks good, in my opinion, it's still a bit of a draft (yea I'm a perfectionist), the settings were low but didn't really have time this morning to tamper with that.  The chrome and car does reflect a bit too bright, but it does look kewl!

What do you guys think?

...wolfie

I like the fireballs.  use BB's refractive glass shader as well.  unless they fixed refractive shadows in SR4.

They don't have SR4 for Poser9, I believe I have the latest SR, which is 3.2, my program is 9.0.3.26132 (had 3.1, just now download/installed 3.2 cause I was curious if there was another update).

Can't find BB's refractive glas shader, and I'm on his page with a bunch of free materials.

I've posted refractive materials many times. Each is in context of some specific scenario, and so using one of them without understanding why/when is somewhat of a problem. This is why I don't just have glass shaders sitting on my site. It requires some thought in choosing which to use and what values to put in. Forum threads provide the context and explanation.

Nevertheless, the basic shader is identical to the car paint - just use Refract instead of Diffuse.

Water is nearly an ideal material having a naturally "polished" surface of utter perfect flatness (microscopically - of course there are waves but that's not going to change the nature of the reflections, just the direction). So you can use this shader which is slightly simpler. The addition of bump or displacement would apply when the water requires waves or ripples.