Okee-dokey... For this tutorial I'm using the P4 Formal Dress and an old texture I had hanging 'round. I wish I could give credit to the texture artist, but I can't read the fancy type on the texture. Whoever you are, thanks. :) The original texture is on the left, and I added the gold trim on the right. Really simple, but in P4 you couldn't do this because when you applied a reflection to a material, it applied to the whole material and you couldn't control it. More to come...

Open your original texture (Left) in an image editor, and select or mask all the areas you want to be reflective. Using layers for this is helpful. Fill the areas you want to be reflective with white, and the rest of the image with black (Middle). This is just like making a transmap. In a transmap your white areas are visible and your black areas are not. Here your white areas are reflective and your black ones are not. As an optional third step (Right), you can fill the reflective areas on your original map with a solid color similar to the color you will be reflecting. This will prevent the texture from shining through the reflection, but won't always be what you need or want. In my case I was going to reflect a gold color, so I filled the reflective areas with a pale yellow. More to come...

Hope this screen shot at least give you an idea. :P Back in Poser, assign your base material as normal... The diffuse slot takes a 2D texture map. In your Reflection_Color slot, assign a Sphere_Map node. This will give you Poser4 type reflections, not rayraced ones. For something as simple as a dress trim, it's not necessary that the material reflect the real environment. In the Color slot of that node, add a normal 2D reflection map of the type we used in P4. You may need to adjust the color of the Color slot as well. As you can (hopefully) see, I made mine a gold shade. The new thing is the Reflection_Value slot. Set this value to 1.0 and then assign your black and white mask image as a 2D Image Map node. What will happen is that White areas will be calculated as 1 (full reflective) and black areas will be calculated as 0 (non-reflective). You could also set the value to less than 1 or use greys in your mask to get slightly reflective areas. That's about it. Render. You do not need to raytrace. Masks like this can be used in a lot of ways. For instance you can not use reflections or shininess on transmapped items. Just link your transmap node to the Reflection Value or the Specular Value slots. Make pearlescent wings, whatever. Hope this is a tensy bit useful and maybe sparks your imaginations for other uses of masking images. I am a crappy artist, and I know a lot of you will come up with uses I never thought of. Phoenix

... because you don't give yourself enough credit. This is really good information. Thank you very much for taking the time to research it and the time you took to make the pics and post it. cheers, dr geep ;=]

I'm sorry, geep. :) I'm really just passing along what I've learned in other 3D apps that can finally be used in Poser. I'm good at learning the techniques. As for applying them, well, I won a 6th grade art contest and I bet I could STILL win a 6th grade art contest except they don't let teachers enter. :) I made a typo in the third post that changes the meaning. It ought to say "For instance you can NOW use reflections or shininess on transmapped items" rather than not. Phoenix

I was trying to offer you a "backhanded" compliment. ;=] I just didn't like the fact that you appeared to be downgrading yourself. e.g., "I am a crappy artist, ..." Mini-tuts are, IMVHO, an "art form" and your minitut here is done very well. I'm not REALLY annoyed, ok? cheers, dr geep ;=]

I know, I know. :) And I appreciated it, although I stand by my assessment of my artistic abilities. Someday I WILL find that "Make Art" button. Phoenix

... the "Art Check" button? You know, like "spell check." I need one that says "document check," or "smart check." ;=]

Funny, Doc. :) Yes, that'd be right, if it would give me a list of alternatives to choose from in a drop down or some such. On the other hand, that might require too much audience participation. Just an auto-artifier would be better. Phoenix

;=]

I'm still trying to figure out the XML behind the Poser5 interface. I will let you know when I find the correct place to insert that. :) Phoenix

Still waiting for P5 here in the UK, but in the meantime, pheonix, have you had a chance to give the environment mapping nodes a spin yet? As an animator I expect to be using -old style- reflection maps in preference to actual ray traced reflections whenever I can get away with it. Bill

The environment mapping appears to be similar to the old KPT shapeshifter environment engine. I am working on some renders of a sphere using different shaders now so we can have some reference. ;)

Hi Phoenix! Looks like a nice tut - but I don't have Poser 5. Looking at your screenshot, I see something new - Displacement. Just curious about how that works in P5. Thanks.