Was going put some models of armour and weapons on my sites suitable for Poser props. However, how to texture them to look like polished steel? I'm used to UVMapper etc but no clue as to reflections etc for Poser. Thanks for any help :)

ambient color - white highlight color - Grey silver to white reflection color - Grey Silver to White Use a Crome reflection map on the steel to get the best polished look. Use steal/metal textures for the texture itsself. Most of it will be experimenting with the different settings there to get the look that your after.

What about P5 Materials Room settings for chrome? For example, improving the look of metal parts on Dudleys car models, or Poser robots...

Ambient colour white will make the thing glow, I think perhaps you mean Highlight white? For metals I'll usually use a pale grey as the highlight, but never an ambient, that stays black. Excuse me for contradicting you but that sounds very strange. For polished effects you need a reflection map for something like a sword blade, for gun metal check out Maclean's reflection maps in 3DCommune free stuff, there's some very useful reflection maps in his pack. One of which can be changed to a blue wash for gunmetal. Armour is the same, low level reflection settings with highlight to white or pale grey, texture colour to white if using a texture map or pale grey if just using colour and reflection to white. I'd advise you leave the ambient settings alone.

Thaks for the help people! :)

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.

In 4 (though I hear 5 can raytrace), items held close to a surface will need a little postwork tweaking to look right -- to paint on a little of the colour of surface they are close to. For instance, a chrome cylinder held against someone's bare right thigh (like a lightsabre on a belt), seen from in front, will have the skin colour on its left (where it's pressed aganist the thigh), but Poser 4 won't do this for you, so you'll have to add it in and blend it in in a paint program.

Agreed with dodger, use reflection maps that are logical to the scene though with the way Poser 4 renders reflections you'll need to indulge in a little postwork anyway. As far as liquid silver or greyscaled ref maps, Poser likes those but they can be overused. Don't think that there aren't uses for them. There are, you just need to think how they'll be used and whether they're suitable for the effect you're trying to achieve. The image I posted uses "liquid silver" reflection maps to metalicize the surfaces of the two items.