I am probably asking a silly question, but do you have ray tracing enabled in your render settings? Also I think you want to set Ambient color to black and have all your transparancy settings set to 0.0000. And I also don't think you need Alternate Specular, as your reflection node is doing the same thing. Other than that, it looks like you have it set up right.

Could anyone state what "anistropic" and what condition it controls. Thank you. ::::: Opera ::::

You do want transparency right? I notice your transparency is currently set to zero?

Lips with Anisotropic applied. Same set-up and settings for anisotropic node as very top image.

Message edited on: 04/25/2005 22:24

If you are using refraction, you DO NOT want any transparancy.

How will he achieve his transparency then?

Fazzel, Try the FireFrost MakeupMat. I bet it would look stunning on your character. Her face looks like it would suit it. Very pretty. Anton

The refraction node is what gives you the glass effect. Notice the ball I used lets you see the cloud background behind it, yet you get more bending of the light at the edges of the ball, just like you would with a real glass ball. If you were to add transparancy, it would tend to ruin the effect. But you have to make sure you have ray tracing checked when you do your render, otherwise no light passes through your glass. About Loretta, she's just an old character I play with from time to time. I just brought her out to demo the anisotropic node. She gets lots of different make-up variations depending on what I want to do with her.

Increase the raytrace bounces in your render settings. They're too low, which is why everything being reflected and refracted is black.

Actually I don't think Mr. Sapient ever gave us what his render settings were,
or even if he had enabled raytracing in his render settings.

Just some more info on anisotropic highlights (people seem to have covered all the other points). "Isotropic" means that something is the same in all directions. On highlights it means the highlight doesn't favour any particular direction over any other - i.e. the highlight tends to be a round spot when you see them on an even surface such as the surface of a sphere. "Anisotropic" means "not isotropic" - i.e the highlight can tend to be bigger in one direction than another. For example, it might be wider horizontally than it is vertically. In real life, anisotropic highlights tend to show up where a surface has long scratches all running in the same direction. Long strait hair has lots of shiny strands all running in the same direction and that's probably the most common anistropic highlight most of us would see in a typical day. Ever noticed how the highlight on a woman's hair can be streched horizontally around the crown of her head, even though the light is coming from a point light such as a light globe? Some metal preparation processes put lots of grooves or scratches all running the same way on the metal and that's another common one. Of course, you can use the anisotropic specular node to do anything you think it looks good doing, but that hair highligt effect is what it was supposedly designed for (it doesn't seem to work particularly well for that though).

"Actually I don't think Mr. Sapient ever gave us what his render settings were, or even if he had enabled raytracing in his render settings." True, but judging from his sample render, it appears raytracing must have been enabled, since there is "some" resemblance of reflection going on there, and it's obviously not a reflect map, since he doesn't have one plugged into his reflection slot. We can only assume what his render settings are, of course, but low raytrace bounces (like only 1 or 2) will typically give back the same result. :-)

Thanks Ajax and Fazzel.

Message edited on: 04/26/2005 00:48

Fazzel, Looking through your nodes above I was under the impression that the Reflection and Refraction values had to add up to one, combined. Thanks

Yes, ideally the sum of the reflection, refraction and diffuse nodes should be 1 and in most cases the diffuse setting should be zero. Fazzel, The interference pattern you are seeing in that render is a Poser 6 bug that seems to happen in most P6 raytracing. I can only hope they'll fix it in the inevitable patch. Any hey, as a favour to those of us on 1024 by 768 screens, could you reduce those pics to a reasonable size? Say 800 by 600? Once stuff gets past 1024 wide I have to scroll left-right to read every single line of text.

Ajax, Are you saying that Refraction, Reflection and Diffuse Values all/combined should equal 1.? Thanks,

Yes, that's what I'm saying. Basically the amount of light coming off your object should be 1 times the amount of light in your scene (unless the object is glowing). The diffuse value tells poser how much light is being reflected diffusely off the surface of the object, the reflection value tells poser how much is coming from coherent reflection and the refraction value says home much is passing through the surface instead of being reflected (either coherently or diffusely), so if the three of them add up to more than 1 then there's more light coming off your object that what actually hit it in the first place. You can have any combo of diffuse, refractive and reflective that you want and as long as they all add up to 1, it should look reasonablly realistic from a physics point of view. In fact, if you use the ambient value as it was intended (to fake a certain level of environmental light rather than as a way of making things glow) then the sum of all four values should be one. Some 3D programs out there even specify that ambient and diffuse must add up to 1 (for non reflective/refractive materials I mean). In Poser, the ambient value is usually much more useful for making things glow though :-)

Fazzel, What were your settings for the sky? Thanks,

Another question I have in attempting this. In setting up the nodes should all material (eyes, teeth, etc...) be the same? Thanks,

Only if you want them to all look the same.

I understand that. I probably asked that question wrong. I would like a figure out of glass. In thinking about that what would a human figure look like if they were glass? Would we be able to see the lips, eyes, etc...? As in a transparent outline? Just thinking through it...

I guess it just depends on what effect you want. I'd be inclined to make everything the same, except the teeth, gums, inner mouth etc. Those I would make 100% transparent with zero specular so you don't wind up seeing glass teeth inside a glass head (unless that's the effect you want).

The sky is a single sided square with the cloud node attached. (3d textures) Make sure you use a single sided square, the two sided square gives you an odd checkerboard pattern unless you fiddle around with the displacement. Single sided squares are just easier to use for backgrounds.

I have a challenge. I have managed to get (for the most part) what it is I am looking for in the way of a glass rendered figure. I might add with the help of all you who contributed to this thread. However... When I export or render to a png file the image is not right. It is solid and does not represent glass at all. I get a better export/render when there is an object (say a square with a design(sky)) behind the glass figure. However, when this is exported to a png (image) file the figure and the background object are one bitmap. I need the figure to stand alone. I am wanting to export the figure into Fireworks and later into a Flash movie. So it is important that it be the single figure. I hope this makes sense. Thanks,

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In order for refraction to work, there has to be something for you to see refracted through the refractive object, so you really need that mesh background behind the head to get the glass effect. In fact you should probably have the head inside a mesh room that surrounds it completely. To get the alpha channel afterwards, do a second render with just the head (and you don't need the head to have any materials for this) then take the alpha channel from the second render and use it to isolate the head from the first render.

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