I'm trying to make a reflective ground floor plane, similar to the lovely glass floors I use in DAZ Studio. In Daz, the edges are softened to blend with the HDRI background by using a map in Cutout Opacity of the Shader tab.

What is the corresponding component in Materials room? I thought it was transparency, but that's not doing it. I don't want the hard edge of the floor, as seen below. There has to be a way to blend it, but I'm lost.

Hmm, it looks like I do have the concept correct, just have to find the right way to do it, LOL.

Looks like I can have a nice reflective floor with hard edges or a tapered edge floor but not both at the moment. One seems to cancel the other out.

Excuse the DOF on that. I forgot I had it on when I sent it to the render queue. It rendered fast over there while I did other things. Nice (except, couldn't see the mistake, LOL) Learning!

Use your settings for the reflection that works for you ... then add a transparency map to your floor that softens the edge on the map and you should have it. I've done this and find it works well.

Thanks, Boni. I tried that and it seems to not like both at once. If I add a ray-traced reflection (which is what I want, to reflect the background), it overrides the transparency map. I need the transparency map to override everything else for the edges. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong, I just don't know what yet. I'm looking at other things that use transparency maps (like hair) to see if I can figure out where I'm going wrong.

I may not be able to look at it until Tuesday ... but if you could post screen-captures of your mat room settings, I might be able to get you around your difficulties.

Have you tried applying the transparency mask to the reflection node so that the transparent parts also have zero reflection.

Ironsoul, I did try that but I'm not sure I'm doing it right. I know enough to be dangerous in there, LOL. It's probably something obvious that I don't realize I'm doing wrong.

Bonnie- thank you, here's the simple view:

And the advanced view:

We are talking about Superfly or Firefly?

ironsoul posted at 5:40AM Tue, 19 February 2019 - #4346407

Have you tried applying the transparency mask to the reflection node so that the transparent parts also have zero reflection.

^this

Just plug your transmap into your spec.

Why are you using the Posersurface node? Use PhysicalSurface. No need to add reflect nodes, everything reflects in Superfly. Increase Roughness (between 0-1) to adjust how reflective your surfaces are. 0.01 is like a mirror, 0.9 is like clay. Adjust Metallic (again 0-1) to set the metalness of your surface, or drive it with a map to have chipped/scratched paint showing metal underneath, etc.

Ahhh, I see. I just need to play more in there. I'm still getting the hang of what is what (and where) in the materials room. Thank you so much for your help!

I'm excited about what can be done in Poser 11, but coming from DAZ, everything seems backwards to me (and I'm sure it's vice versa going the other way.) I started in both programs at the same time, but took off in DAZ. I really want to learn Poser better and use it to its potential. Just taking me longer to get the hang of things here.

Yes! That's what I wanted- something that would reflect whatever I put in the EZDome for a background. And with BlackHearted's recommendations for Superfly render settings + rendering in queue, this took five minutes with no grain. There are still things I need to tweak but it's a very good start (no postwork):