This is my first rendering in DAZ|Studio, but I am unable to figure out how to make the woman's body reflect in the mirror with the raytracing feature. Any help would be appreciated.

Select the mirror material and set the diffuse to black or very dark grey (mirrors don't have a colour), set the Ambience to very dark grey and about 10%. Set reflection at 100% and white colour.

Make sure the camera - mirror - character alignment is set up so she reflects on the surface and that it's not the background reflecting (a common mistake)

Remember, the line of site between the camera and the mirror is the angle the mirror will reflect at. So if the camera is at 30 degrees to the mirror, it will reflect whatever is 30 degress offset from the the other side. If the figure is 90 degress perpendicular to the mirror and you have a 30 degree camera angle, you won't see the figure in the mirror. So you'll need to play with camera angles as well. Looking at what you've got there, I'm not convinced you'll reflect the woman.

The other thing to consider is the surrounding environment. If you are rendering just those two figures against a black background the mirror will reflect the black, same with whatever other colour you choose because that is the environment colour.

Also make sure the character is lit from the back as well or the reflection will look strange because it's shadowed.

I've got a more complex mirror tutorial lurking around my system somewhere, I'll see if I can hunt it up.

The image is just a quick example. Three planes with the above settings rendered against a black background. Reflection does work, it just takes a bit of tweaking and fiddling to get what you want.

Message edited on: 11/12/2004 07:32