@Nanette: yes it will render faster as it can skip the before mentioned calculation steps. But no, you won't notice the difference unless you render out long animations.

just for curiosity: why are normal maps expected to have benefits over bump maps - in Poser renders, that is.

In my understanding (so please tell me where I go wrong)

 * bump maps represent some displacement (without doing the displacement itself), and are easy for further / user manipulation (add, multiply, brightness/contrast enhance)
 * from that, normal distortions at the object surface are derived via complex calculations
 * then those distortions are applied

while for normal maps the first two steps are performed in a seperate program, saved in a normal map, and then the third step is derived from that map. That is why using normal maps just require far less calculation efforts at render time, therefor they are preferred in the gaming environment with high FPS rates. But normal maps themselves are not suit for further / user manipulation anymore. 

Support for normal maps in Poser is for this reason: when you've got a model from a gaming area, including its textures and normal map, you can import it into Poser and thanks to Posers ability to deal with the normal map, you can render it out with decent results. But normal maps were never seen as the next step to bump mapping. In my view that is. 

Cloth Room tuts have been done before [ link ]

Indeed, it was broken in Poser 5,6,7,8 / pro2010,9 / pro2010 and is sort of fixed in Poser 10 / pro2014. Sort of as in: at least it looks good.

However, I do wonder: the environment is reflected in the mirror which is blurred reflected at the back of the figure. Then this back of the figure is reflected in the mirror again, and so blurred reflected at the back of the figure again. Now, is this last result double blurred indeed (as it should), or just single blurred (improved but still fake)? Can someone show me a proof of it?  

my Octane doing mirrors Rose Garden

okay, points are made, I'll see how things develop, and when someone misses me: I'm not dead, I'm on site mail.

okay, apparently Z-depth and invisible don't combine that well. But still you can do a render with wall, and a Z-depth without at a faster render pace. That's something. Usually you need the high image resolution either, for Z-depth. That's enother saver.

And the Camera Perspective can still be of use.

have fun ! 

say you're not using focal blur, but just blur reflections as such.

say a reflective metallic ball is blurring to an amount X while a mirror (which is reflective metallic too, after all) is blurring to an amount Y. Then in real life you'll get a blurred reflection of a blurring ball, the blurring adds up (X+Y or something alike). But in Poser the ball in the mirror will be blurred to an amount Y only, as the blurring by the ball itself is not showing directly to the camera (but via reflection instead) and hence will not be performed in the render.

Now you're just using focal blur, and the objects reflect sharp. You focus on the ball reflected in the mirror.

Then in real life, the scene seems to continue behind the mirror and the ball in there is at some serious distance. That will be sharp, and the mirror - which is closer to you - will be somewhat blurred while the ball itself - which is closest - will be most blurred. Poser instead will blur the ball as expected, and will blur the mirror accordingly too. But... it will blur the reflection in the mirror as much as the mirror itself, and the ball in the mirror will never get sharp. You need an unblurred (area) render for a Photoshopped replacement.
Note that this is a Firefly thing. Unbiased, physics renders like Octane do get the right image and - like the octane plugin - make you focus interactively as well.

Now you're having both: focal blur on a blurring ball in a blurring mirror. Poser will combine both kinds of blur independantly. This gets you the amount of blur by the mirror only, and the amount of focal blur on the mirror, for the mirror as well as its reflection. And you'll get the blur of the ball and the focal blur on the ball, for the reflection from the ball to the camera. The sharp version to be Photoshopped will still not give you the blur of the ball through the mirror. It's a Poser no-go. 

when in the 70's the birth rates went down in Europe, the stork population went down as well while the use of refrigerators went up. So either storks do deliver babys or people appreciate a good snack over good sex. Or, as Churchill said: you've got lies, damn lies and statistics. Same with the Rendo forum. In a large scale investigation I performed for the Rendo FAQ project, I found that threads on materials contained twice as much posts as average. Why? Not because people were more involved but because a statement on materials requires images, and in those days Rendo supported only one image per post so a single statement required more posts to make.

When your line of thinking is followed, all forums should be merged into one. Which is fine to me, but it's just not the case.  

And I do know some people face some "issues" when dealing with the forum software. Actually, I don't. Cutting and pasting works fine except when using IE, adding content to a post works fine by just putting that content on my site or in Dropbox and including a link to it in the post, and when the post does not appear at once I only click F5 to refresh.  Perhaps all are good reasons to swear every now and then, I feel with you.

My simple request is: just don't do it over and over again in the Poser forum. As statistics never prove anything (they only can show some assumptions are unlikely), and I never said that people (in general) did not like to see other people knocking each other out. My point is that some people don't like it when they come in for Poser related stuff only, and they deserve a place on Earth too.

That's why I suggested to do the non-Poser topics in a non-Poser corner of Rendo. From your logic, it might be a shear hit. Good! And still there will be people not visiting it, as there are still people not visiting the Poser forum for the simple reason: they don't do Poser (but Vue, fractals, Photoshop, ...). And I don't do negativity towards other people, for good personal reasons. I don't put them on lists either. So I do claim the rights to be, at Rendo too.

You're fully entitled to do negativity without Poser. I'm not stopping you, I'm just asking you to do it somewhere else.
I'm entitled to do Poser without negativity. You are hindering me with that! Stop it. 

When you want competitions without prizes, then start one. It's done before. Or whine about other people not starting them. I don't mind. Just don't do it in the Poser forum, so I can have a nice place to be too.

so the wall of the room closest to the camera is the culprit. You can take that section out (and in order to take some light from the dome out, build a new larger wall behind the camera).

The other option is to bring the camera into the room. Then you might need Camera Perspective to set the required focal length.  Perspective alters the Camera Scale too and enables you to make wide angle shots at a large distance or the other way around.

Just thinking out loud, perhaps someone else has a better idea. 

by the way, nice scene !!

okay, first: JPG does not support transparency while PSD does, so I'm not supprised by that effect. PNG will do transparency as well.

I'm not in the position to run tests and things, but my first impression is that something with a smooth Z-depth presence is standing in the way. And the only thing I can think of, is that environment sphere. Which is set to behave invisible to the rendering, but I'm not sure if it does so to to the z-depth determination. So, effectively, your camera is out of the sphere looking into the scene.

A solution might be either to move the camera inside, or (my favorite) to enlarge the environment sphere. For a test: just make it visible, is it blocking the render then? If so, we've got our culprit.

Hornet, thanks.

My general "issue" with the forum is its Poser overload indeed. Let's put it in perspective: when you've got a budget, start detailing, and 90% of it ends up a one post of it, then there is not much point in the detailing is it? You'd better detail that single 90% line. Same with Poser in the Rendo forum. It takes say 90% of it, and just for that reason alone I'm in great favor of splitting it up. Let them make it room oriented or whatever.

Now the Poser forum is popular because everyone is posting everything in there because it's popular because ... (etcetera), and so we've ended up with a garbage bin where effectively all the other threads in all other Rendo forums can be dumped as well.

So, yes I fully understand why things are happening but that doen's mean I'm happy with it. 

At the content side of the forum I'm in dubio. Of course it's actually a compliment that people feel the Rendo forum as a place to dump their frustrations on anything. It's good to have a wailing wall at hand. On the other hand, it's not that funny to have to wade through all this wailing for the forum users who do not need all this, and actually prefer to do without for their own personal reasons. So perhaps some splitting up can help here as well.

Next to all that, I'm seriously raising a red flag. It's not (only) the fulminating, negative and frustrated people that go away or threaten to do so. It's also the same people that do not go away but go on and on and on (and moderators not intervening), that drive the positive and contructive users out. I hope Rendo is aware.

In my early consulting days, I learned that more and more of the same medicine wont work. If your appraoch doesn't work, then do something else.
So I read Vilters post, saying "they are not responding" (to the fulminations, and the loud accusations, etc, in the Poser forum). Well then, stop it, and do it in a different way. Would be my suggestion.

All the best. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the whining, but I do mind the whining in the Poser forum. As your issue might be just a thread, but it's certainly not Poser.

Because this is NOT a community but the Poser section in the Software part of that, and this community offers other places for other purposes. I don't ask you to stop, and I don't ask the moderators to delete anything from Rendo. I just ask you to perform your acts somewhere else, and ask the moderators to help with that. We've got a Suggestions forum, for instance.

Like I'm in great favor of freedom of speech, but I don't like you speeching out loud in the reading room of the public library. Because when you do (frequenty), and no moderators intervene, I'm forced to do my reading somewhere else. And that's not what the reading room was established for, when they also offer a nice Hall or Park for your outings.

all the best, have fun with your lists,

When you don't know where to go, you don't need wheels at all. When you do know where to go, you might not need a car.

So the first "issue" is: why are you in this forum in the first place? To show off your nice personality? To show off your magnificent Poser skills? To twit around and show your frustration and lack of anger management skills? Because you need a wailing wall and no one else is listening to poor you?

This is the Poser forum, where people can seek help and inspiration in handling their Poser software (any version) and some closely related stuff like content and plugin-kit. This is not the "I can't handle the Rendo site" forum, nor the "I can't stand those stupid (whatever) ..." chatroom.

So please dear moderators, whipe this place clean and make it a warm place to be for me again. Please allow constructive Poser related postings only (on SW flaws one can communicate in constructive manners too!), and put all the other "issues" somewhere else. Otherwise, I'm moving out gradually as well. Not due to anything Rendo but just due to the high levels of negativity around. I see enough misery around in my Real Life, I don't need it as part of my hobby.

Cheers.