I am getting pretty frustrated. I've had Poser for close to two years at this point, and suddenly within the last 4 to 8 weeks it is messing up props and objects that I've used many times before. Even if I load old saved files, which rendered perfectly fine, they now regularly mess up valid objects, materials, and props.

Attached are two images, which demonstrate the latest screw up. BeltTest1 is the belt from Hongyu's Cop Girl. BeltTest2 is the pose from OOT's Watching applied to the belt.  This exact same combination rendered perfectly fine roughly a month ago.

What in the world is going on here?

Question 1 : Does the belt come with an mtl file?
Question 2 : Did Poser ask for a missing texture?
Question 3 ; What version of Poser are you using and with what SR?

1. No mtl file.

2. It does not ask for a missing texture.

3. Poser Pro 2014. I'm not sure which SR. Version 10.0.4.27796. I think that's SR4?

Here is the material room set up: 

It renders exactly the same way no matter the angle or lighting. Just that one part is blank/missing for no reason that I can discern. The belt renders perfectly fine with the default materials from Hongyu. It's only when I apply the materials from OOT's Watching, which used to work perfectly fine as well.

Add a figure into the scene off camera.

The test renders were simplified. The object is being used in a full scene in an enclosed warehouse with over 100 figures and objects, and it acts exactly the same in the scene.

I sort of fixed it, but I'm still not sure why it happened or why what I did should be necessary. I looked at the materials from the original object, and it was using an Sphere Map. So I inserted one between the JPG file and the Reflection Node. It makes the metal a lot brighter than the original material is supposed to be, but i can adjust that with the Color on the Sphere Map.

SR4 is doing some weird stuff with imported obj's. It's plugging the bump map into the diffuse node and ignoring the diffuse map -- every single time. I've learned to make MC6's or MT5's for all my imported obj's. It applies those without error.

     Roughly speaking, diffuse+specular+ambient+reflection <= 1.  You have 1 in diffuse but with a dark (black?) color, same with ambient.  Maybe back off the specular a bit.  Set ambient value to 0.  Perhaps try setting diffuse down to 0.2 but give it a medium-light grey color.

     Try adding a figure to the scene as Phil suggested;  that will check for a bug.

     Check the normals forward box and see if it makes any difference - that will check for inconsistent geometry normals.

 The above is correct.

You have Diffuse at true BLACK and at 1.000
AND you have Ambient set to true BLACK and at 1.000
AND you ask it to reflect.

Poser is doing exactly what you ask it to.

Before we had IDL in the recent Poser versions, Indirect Light effects had to be faked.

With every new Poser version the material room and the lights get better and better.

All the "old style faking" you can find in older material room setups has to be removed to render in the newer Poser versions that have IDL and GC.

As from PP2012 onwards, remove all "faking" in the nodes and render with IDL and GC.

• Check IDL ON in the render settings.
• Set GC at 2.2 for all color maps.
• Set GC at 1 for all Black and White maps that go in transparancy, specular, bump or dispacement nodes.

I'll try to play around with everyone's suggestions this weekend.

That still begs the question though, "Why was this rendering perfectly fine just a month ago?" I might have installed SR 4 within the last month, I'm honestly not sure, but I've been using Poser Pro 2014 for quite a while. The render settings haven't been changed. The lights haven't been changed. Nothing in the scene was altered in the last month, and yet it now doesn't render correctly even though I'm using the exact same settings.

You might also try updating to SR5. 

Just FYI, 

I tried everything suggested here. Adjusted ambient, specular, reflection, and diffuse to a variety of values (including making sure those values only total to 1). I even set all of those to white, instead of black, and played with various combinations of strengths again. I then turned ambient, specular, and diffuse to ZERO, so there was only the reflect node active. Also tried rendering with normals forward. Ran all tests with just simple render settings, then tried them all again with maximum quality (Raytrace, IDL, GC on, etc)

None of that made any difference. All of the Renders turned out exactly as above.

This time all tests were run in a simple room with three walls, Andy 2, and the belt in the scene.

It made absolutely no difference.

I did not update to SR 5 yet, but I bought Game Dev. So I may try again with SR 5, and then again with Game Dev.

At this point, I would recommend switching the original shaders with Snarly's EZMetal shaders.  They are more in tune for responding better to IDL and a tad more realistic. Realism might not be you goal, however EZMetal shaders are meant to reflect and respond to your existing light rather than faking it with the original setup.