The quality isnt bad but nothink like a firefly render with raytracing on.  The texture method is a method but I liked the wireframe variations shown via the display styles.

Right guys.  Here are some results after playing with the cool material bagginsbill
gave me.  I took the quality of the reflectioin down to 0.1 where the reflection speared more sharp and tight.  I generaly played with colour in addition to a few tweaks here and there. I made a sky dome in hexagon and got some textures inside of it.  Theres more to come and much better renders and shaders to look forward too in the near future.

Thanks again for all who posted and helped.

Email sent to you.

Thanks.

For some reason I just couldnt get it to look like yours.  If its posible could you please send me the scene file so I can load it into poser and learn from it.  You have got it looking realy nice.  Do you have the poser 7 car or any car as if like to see your material on a car.

Thanks.

Ahh right.  I just made a dome in hexagon and set the top area to a shading domain coloured white.  I added basic IBL and added the infinate light but then the infinate light dont alow the white spot in the  dome to show as the light is pointing down?

Wow these are looking dam good.  Could you show me a pic of the sky dome please, im just trying to set up one now and lighting.  The shader is made now I just need to get the rest into place.

Thanks for this info its realy helpfull.   I was unsure that poser could do such good renders and shaders, this shows in the right hands its posible.

Im going to make this material now.

Il go back and try again.   I made the sky ball  and stood a character over the car bonnet.  for some reason the car looks flat with no specular but will show the reflection still.    I added another light with IBL to try and create more specula but that didnt help.

Another huge problem im having is the render times.  Im puting the settings on at a level where its just alowing raytracing but its taking a very long time to test things out.  When I go for a final render it can take upto a hour or more.

bagginsbill do you think its posible to get a paint to look as good these renders?

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8669/conceptcarfinallarge2800xt.jpg

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7605/paint29mb.jpg

Thanks bagginsbill.  The first one was a script and athough followed what to do, it never worked.  Same for the seccond link.  I followed it and put the nodes in the right places and all the settings the same and it didnt look the same.  All I can think of is somhow the lighting is wrong despite me using HDR, IBL?

Quote - > Quote - The light nodes plug into the PoserSerface route node not a light route node.  The lighting nodes go to their respective places, like Raytrace/Recfect to the Reflection colour of the route node, Specular/Blinn to the Alternate Spectular of the route node.

I know but I'm one of these people who's never happy with something being unusable :D you can actually plug those node into any of the sockets, they don't just have to plug into the sockets they're named for. :D

Yep I know you cam plug em in anywhere which can offer some good but odd results.  I just wondered why you where trying to plug em into a light route node, you must know your way about the nodes fine im sure, maybe I was mistaken or miss read your post.

I think one of my short falls at the moment is a good light setup.

Quote - Click the above image for a full size preview (these are unedited materials from this free pack on the car. no other materials were used!)

You can save yourself alot of time and effort, and download my pack of car materials from the freebie section.

There are 158 Materials in total in this package for Poser 5,6,7

Ranging from ClearCoat, Sparkle Paint, SuperGloss, and ColorChange (Chameleon/flipflop)
also, there are interior materials like carpet, leather and plastic, chrome metals, tyre rubber and the like.

Thankyou so much.  Im just checking them all out now, looks like you have done a realy good job on these.

I can see from the setup I wasnt far off when making my own, but a little off is enougth to make it look totaly wrong.  Im using the 3ds max demo and trying to make the car shader for poser in these pictures.  Im not sure than poser can achive such renders though.

First picture was a shader I made in max.  Second shader is max 9 built in shader.

http://img208.imageshack.us/img208/8669/conceptcarfinallarge2800xt.jpg

http://img263.imageshack.us/img263/7605/paint29mb.jpg

Couldnt get any image shack link to show phumb nail or pictures in thred?

Quote - I have found you can't plug any of the light nodes into a light, not sure why I would need to do that but it's frustrating not being able to.

The light nodes plug into the PoserSerface route node not a light route node.  The lighting nodes go to their respective places, like Raytrace/Recfect to the Reflection colour of the route node, Specular/Blinn to the Alternate Spectular of the route node.

Im trying to make a good car paint material but its prooving to be very hard. 

Thanks il check this out.

Id like to try the same scene and see what my system does.