Hey all, While I am working on my new scene (which will probably take a while), I will sporadically work on another idea in my head, which while relatively easy to do, should look cool... 8^) But I need a good mirror shader. The one included in Carrara seems to be CRAP. It seems dull, and not very reflective actually. And no matter what kind of adjustments I make in the shader tree, it doesn't seem to be turning out well. Any hints or ideas on this one? I know some of you out there have done scenes with excellent mirrors, so any nudges in the right direction would be, as always, most appreciated... Headgamer

Clint has a good one in his downloadable shaders. Mirrors, like reflecting water, look best when you map or create a gradient blend for a background. (which can be different than the backdrop which shows up when you render) For example, that Waterglobe shader that is available in the free download section looks pretty mediocre unless you have a bigradient background which causes it to becomes luminous. Any time I create scenes that have a highly reflective surface I'll also position light and dark elements out of the camera view that cast reflections onto the object. (Check out the 'mixmaster' in the gallery section. Without white 'reflectors' the object would have been gray on all up facing surfaces.) Hope that this helps. Mark

Thanks Mark, I couldnt remember if one of the Mirror shaders was in my trial pack or not. ;) Clint

Hello there, I just finished one of my works where I have to use a mirror, the best way I find to get a realistic mirror was to set, for the same mirror shader that comes with the program, set the color tab to color and chose black, that will do it, or at least it works for me Good luck. Douglas.