first, I guess the depth map can be generated from any render settings, even with SSS and raytracing (and hence IDL) OFF, and various render quality settings at a low value. But you do need some render process to make it.

In order to make sense out of the map, the issue is whether the regular 8 bit grayscale 0..255 is good enough. You might need to save in 16-bit format or EXR, and boost contrasts in Photoshop (or alike). So perhaps the info is there but you can't see it on screen, and it gets lost when saving to PNG or so.

Or we might just need more info to sort this one out, but then we need some more shots on the screen. The rendered result, a top-shot including cam position, things like that. 

have fun 

Glen,

just draw a triangle on paper, A = from figure to camera, B = from figure to mirror, C = from mirror to camera and A < C . Now the optical distance from figure to camera via the mirror equals B + C that's quite larger than C and even more larger than A. So when B+C is in focus then the figure at A is the most unsharp and the mirror is somewhat in between.

In Poser: render 1 without focal blur producing a sharp image in the mirror, render 2 with focal blur for focal distance B+C.

Personally I don't like the Poser focal blurred renders at all, rendedr times are far too long and quality is far too low. I just make the sharp render plus a Z-depth map and use the latter for a mask on the photoshop blur effect - in your case while masking out the mirror reflection to keep that one sharp. The z-mask should be inverted to give most blur to the most nearby objects in the scene, and could be adjusted in contrast and brightness to regulate the effect your want.

"Never do in 3D what can be done in 2D" is the motto. 

As BB says, Poser blurring is a somewhat post effect. Make a reflective steel ball with blurred reflectivity and look at that ball through a (blur-less) mirror as well. Same for skin scattering. All those effects work on rays directly towards the camera only. One just needs other tools for better results.

Have fun. 

JimmyJohn,

when you want a single kind of texture on multiple objects, to make them look like one (walls from segments is the typical example) then you should not map them with local, object-relative coordinates like UV at all. You should apply global (or world) coordinates instead. For this purpose, many material nodes (accessible through Advanced interface) offer a Global Coordinates box that in this case should be checked. Images, 3D texture generators, etc work that way exactly for the purposes you stated.

Note however that when an object is global-coordinate mapped, that texture will change when you move that object in the scene. So, in still renders it does not matter but in animations one can get weird effects.

have fun. 

Boni,

this FAQ attempt was made  not that long ago, by a previous forum support BasicWiz. We had a team, Vilters was doing modeling related stuff, I was doing materials related stuff, SnarlyGribbly was involved and so on. After a few months, I've not seen any progress from the various members (for probably good personal reasons) while I finished my Materials section - after say three months hard work. After that, about no-one appeared willing to perform a decent detailed review before issuing the stuff. Then BasicWiz could not establish any space for it on the Rendo site (not his fault), and I decided to locate the stuff on my own site.

There it is, and if one feels for copying and pasting it to any other place on the net, please do. Plus a lot on dynamics (hair & cloth). Mainly thanks to a lot of debates with BB and others, some years ago.

In the meantime, it might be far more fruitful to issue just comments on the various pages on my site, and reference it in the Rendo replies on questions. That is hardly done as well. I'm happy to host info from other contributers, but it's never asked for. Various people are often asked "to write that book" about their Poser knowledge. The book is already there, just waiting to be filled. I'm happy to receive, edit and maintain, it does not have the disadvantages of a forum, and the site is called Missing Manuals for a good reason. No strings attached, except that my site is never going to be a wailing wall for any dissatisfaction on anything. One only has to DO something instead of talking about it.

I would enjoy to see the "hot shots" from the Rendo community acting as a really performing constructively collaborating group.  One day...

all the best,
aRtBee

backed up. Will post a copy on my site - soon

survey went fine, no issues, thanks

 http://www.book.artbeeweb.nl/?book=material-room

written on explicit request by Renderosity. Enjoy the rest of the site as well. 

in my opinion:

• pupil = black (diffuse only), unless you want a red-eye effect (humans, cats) or similar silver-eye effect (dogs) or something funny / fantasy

• iris = diffuse only (note)

• sclera = eye white, bump and SSS to your liking, needs a diffuse map for veins. Bit bluish for youngsters, bit yellowing for elder people, bit greyinsh for middle-aged (note)

• cornea =covering pupil / iris. Make it either completely transparant or make it reflective / specular (note)

• eye surface = not present on all eye models. Make it either completely transparent or make it reflective / specular (note)

* lacrimal = flesh, that guides the tears. Flesh color / diffuse map, reflective / specular, bump and SSS only for eye - close ups 

• tear = salty water, use only when needed. Reflection / specular and transparency 

Notes:

• either use an eyesurface for reflection / specularity OR use cornea and sclera for this, not both

• usually reflection goes with refraction, but Poser will not let light pass through refraction so a refractive eyesurface / cornea / tear will turn the inner portions black. One solution is to make iris etc ambient (they radiate light themselves), another solution is to use transparency instead of refraction. Both have pro's and con's, the first is tough to set up and balance properly and does not export well to external renderes, the second can make long(er) rendertimes as mixing transparency and reflection is something to be avoided in Poser materials.

• I only use tears when emotionally justified and/or in very close-up shots, I only use bump on eyes in very close-up (partial) facial shots, and on whole-body shots eye-SSS becomes overkill.

hope this helps a bit, have fun 

much cheaper, running on AMD and into realism as well is the Reality / Luxrender route. But it's far from speedy and not interactive.

Somewhere on the web there is a free Pose2Lux plugin around, addressing LuxRender as well. 

Taking your Poser scene into (free) Blender and then into other (free) unbiased render engines  is another alternative. Cycles, Kirkythea, etc. Somewhere in this forum someone even reported about using the free Renderman. So there are lots of alternatives. But in general, high speed plus high quality plus high functionality does come with costs.

 have fun. 

I do think so, I use the plugin version and I can do all my lighting and materials interactively. With my gear (dual nVidia 770) it's say 100x faster than Poser firefly (on 12 thread 4GHz CPU) - which is a life-saver for animation - while Poser does have some fundamental (un-resolvable) flaws when it comes close to realism.

But do note that one usually wants more / faster video cards on top of the SW costs, and it does take time to learn the tricks of a new trade.

Artists like RGUS publish about daily in the Rendo gallery, you can ask them as well (as most don't frequent the Rendo forum). 

@DeathMetalDesk: as Wim says. You can do anything, the surface element at the spot is just displaced (in a direction dictated by the surface normal) by any value that comes out of your node tree, multiplied by the displacement value. Do note however, that this displacement value is measured in your local Poser units. So when you're using inches (like BB does), 1.0 means 1" while when using meters (like I do), 1.0 means 1 meter. This must be taken into consideration when implementing node-tree setups from other users.

Wim, I understand the color-subtraction but... either you must use render gamma on the bump map (not a good idea) or apply a gamma inversion on the grey swatch, either manual (as BB suggests, somewhat tedious) or by inserting the gamma node. Otherwise the swatch gets darkened before rendering while the bump map will not, and the subtraction goes wrong. Unless you switch off GC at all, of course.

Mat_room setup, forcing a 50% grey and subtracting 0.5 for neutral, in a gamma-insensitive way.

BTW: the cube has a 3-level subdivision to enable neat edges around the tiles. 

 for the sake of it, same two cubes, from a different angle, using displacement now.

thanks for this, although I'm not sure what exactly is the point.

My notes:

 * in Poser one can have negative Displacement (Height) values, in Octane one can't. To turn white spots on the image into dents in the surface, Octane needs the inverse of the image instead. In your image, when I make an animation where the white elements move in and out while the black element moves in contrast, in Poser I can simply animate the displacement value from -1 to +1 and back. In Octane I have to do it a different way.

 *  Bump and displacement are values, there is no need for the (gamma sensitive) color_math. I just use math_function instead, and subtract 0.5.

 * Displacement does alter the size of an object, and 0 means "none", whatever the way it's derived. Putting a non-displaced object next to a displaced one immediately demonstrates the meaning of neutral. With Bump this is different. Within the area covered by a bump-map, shadows will get distorted in a relative way (so a positive bump value black will look deeper than grey, and white will look higher than grey. As demonstrated in Wims images above). When putting a bumped and non-bumped object next to each other, the boundary between the surfaces will not reveal any depth info. Bump-neutral has no meaning outside the mapped region.

<image goes here, I hope. left cube has no bump, right cube has a lot, made by Tile node with black and white tiles and midgrey in between. At the boundary, there are no in/out revealing highlights or shadows>