Ok, I've been trying to get materials to reflect the background in Poser 11. I can't for my life get it to work. I set up the material with black Diffuse color, a Diffuse value of 0. I then add a raytracing reflective node with black color to the Reflection color. Reflection value is 1.

The object is now reflecting other objects in the scene, so far so good.

I have a diffuse IBL light with a HDR image. Which seems to work fine. It's not causing the reflective objects in the scene reflect the HDR image though. I then added the same HDR image to the BG Picture node in the Background settings. I attached that node to Color on the root Bakcground node. I even attached the BG Picture to BG Color. No background reflections.

I simply can't get the objects to reflect the background. What am I doing wrong? I suppose I could make a sphere with the HDR image as a texture around the scene but that seems like a poor man's workaround.

Poser doesn't support what you're doing. That's why everybody uses my free Environment Sphere, which does support it. Or - for a rectangle background, not spherical, you just use the one-sided square.

Poser FireFly Reflect node only reacts to objects with geometry, not to lights of any kind, nor to the virtual "Background" actor which has no geometry.

SuperFly Reflect node reacts to objects with geometry and to lights and to the spherical "background" entity. I do not think it reacts to an IBL, though I haven't bothered to try. I have no reason to -- I use my Environment Sphere which works with everything all the way back to Poser 5.

LOL ... thank you bagginsbill, You posted this while I was doing a web-search to find the very information you provided!! (And far more articulately I might add).

"I suppose I could make a sphere with the HDR image as a texture around the scene but that seems like a poor man's workaround."

Actually, this is the sophisticated solution, not the poor man's workaround. You can parent a light (for the sun) to the sphere and then rotate it, keeping the light in sync with however you want it spun to produce the effect you want. For Sci Fi you can parent more than one light or a planet or whatever. You can use a more sophisticated shader (which I provide) to do special effects, like turn day into night, or clear weather into a storm.

Have a look at my effects page.

Environment Sphere Effects

Awesome! Thanks for Effects link, BB! Very useful and always thanks for sharing.

You can always count on Bill or Boni for a Poser answer. :)

Thank you so much bagginsbill for the information!

I always used to create reflection maps for my content products in Poser. A chrome-ish looking image attached to a sphere map on the reflection node. It looks ok if you want the object to give the impression of being made of chrome or metal. This has been the established way to create chrome or metal reflections in both Poser and DAZ Studio since neither of them had any support for HDR until just recently. Ok, Poser have had support for HDR images for a couple of versions now. But since DAZ Studio didn't support HDR it felt ok to stick to "fake" reflection maps so your products would look pretty much the same in both applications.

But ever since DAZ Studio started using the Iray render engine, which has full HDR support (both lights and background reflections) I felt it was time to go over to actual reflection settings for my products for both Poser and DAZ Studio. At least include a set of materials with true reflection settings for both applications. What I find surprising is that Poser doesn't support reflections from HDR backgrounds the way I imagined it. Because most other applications (DAZ Studio, Carrara, Bryce, Cinema 4D etc) works exactly like it. Half the idea with HDR domes is to create realistic reflections in reflective materials. So if you set up a HDR background in any application above it will just work automatically with reflections just like that. It would actually be pretty difficult to achieve the Poser behaviour, having a HDR background as light source only but prevent it from being a reflection source.

I admit there's a strict logic sense with the Poser approach. In the end it gives you full control of the environment. I see how you could use one HDR image as a light source and use a complete different HDR image in a sphere for some peculiar reflection effect. But then again, you'd most often want the realistic set up with both lights and reflections coming from the same source. I find it odd that Poser doesn't have that automatically.

Wot?

If you have a skydome / envirosphere / background plane etc. with an HDR image on it (or any kind of image for that matter), it will be reflected by a Poser reflection node.

Where did you get the idea that Poser doesn't do this?

IsaoShi posted at 2:01PM Thu, 16 June 2016 - #4272583

Wot?

If you have a skydome / envirosphere / background plane etc. with an HDR image on it (or any kind of image for that matter), it will be reflected by a Poser reflection node.

Where did you get the idea that Poser doesn't do this?

If the question is directed towards me, then it was bagginsbill who gave me that idea. I'm certainly not an expert on Poser and I only just recently upgraded to Poser 11 so there are endless amounts of possibilities that I may have missed new features in version 11. But after some googling and research I came to the conclusion that there doesn't seem to exist a native Poser object that can function as a skydome/envirosphere. There are however lots of freebies and user created domes and spheres available for download. Which is great but still a bit besides the point in terms of limitations of Poser functionality.

Said domes and spheres are actual objects added to the scene, so obviously they will be reflected by a Poser reflection node. This doesn't stop me from thinking that it should be a built in feature in Poser. Since any other 3D application has that feature without requiring the user to download or create a custom made sphere object for that purpose.

If there indeed is such a thing as a skydome and envirosphere in Poser 11, then I simply missed it. You also mention "background plane" which I assume is also a flat plane object added to the scene with a texture image on it. Meaning, you're not referring to the default Background object in Poser. And again, objects in the scene will of course be reflected. But why doesn't reflections simply work with the already existing background?

Poser 11 loads as default with a prop called The Construct that encompasses the whole scene. Unless you have deleted it from the scene (or made it invisible) maybe that is mucking up your reflections.

[ravenous]

If the question is directed towards me, then it was bagginsbill who gave me that idea.

Yes, it was directed to you - sorry. He was answering your original post, in which you talked about reflecting an image on an IBL light. Firefly reflection doesn't react to lights, and Superfly completely ignores IBL lights.

But after some googling and research I came to the conclusion that there doesn't seem to exist a native Poser object that can function as a skydome/envirosphere.

Not until Poser 11, which does have the 'Construct' object already loaded in the default scene.

But why doesn't reflections simply work with the already existing background?

Because the Poser 'Background' is not an object (with geometry) in the scene. (See bagginsbill's first reply above).