Go to www.confluence.org and grab a nice landscape shot, then run some filters on it and make it really small because it doesn't need to be big. Use that as your reflection map. For steel, use the following settings: Object colour: medium grey or white with a texture map Highlight Colour: white Ambient colour: black Reflection colour: medium grey with a tiny hint of blue Reflection Strength: about 70% is usually good Multiply by lights: on (for steel, off for chrome, gold, stainless, etc) Multiply by object colour: off (on for glass and transparent stuff) Highlight size: 100% My more recent props have all this stuff set right. Take a look at the Babylon 5 PPG for an example of shiny stainless steel. The Scythe Sword also had some nice metals going on. I have a thread in the Poser Tech forum I recently posted that shows examples of several metals and glass type stuff using these techniques. In a render, and I recommend mentioning this in the README, people should use a reflection map appropriate to their scene. Often the same pic as the background, if any, works. Otherwise (if there's no background, i.e. all interior) position the auxiliary camera just outside of the item looking TOWARDS the main camera's position and render that, and use it as a reflection map. don't don't don't use a 'smeary grey' or 'liquid silver' type reflection map -- unless you're doing a picture set in the Astral Plane or something, where the background reflected would actually look like that. Use a picture of what is to be reflected. Also, when making a coherent piture, it's important that anything with a reflection map (except maybe magickal stuff) use the same reflection map. It makes little sense that one thing might reflect one thing and another reflect something different. BTW, for glass, set the trans max to 100%, the trans min to 0%, the colour to a fairly bright kelly green or blue (grey for lead crystal), and set the transparency falloff to about .2 to .4 and use a reflection map.