CAN I REFLECT OBJECTS IN A SURFACE IN DAZ OR POSER 6? IM TRYING IT, BUT I HAVENT SUCCEEDEDIT. THANKS.

yes you can - if you do a search for "Standing Mirror" in the Free Stuff you can dl that and look at how that's been set up (it does reflect the object in front of it)- I'm no expert on how to set up the material, but you need to have Raytracing switched on in the render settings (the readme with the prop gives a bit more detail) hope this helps

I wrote a little tutorial about this. It is in German but you can still see from the images how the shader nodes have to be set up. http://www.jasms.de/diverses/poser/reflect/reflect.html There are several possibilities, but the important thing it to turn on "raytracing".

Yup, the diffuse MUST be black for a perfect mirror (a perfect mirror has no colour of it's own, it just reflects everything back).

Although it seems confusing, this exactly "mirrors" the physical world. All surfaces absorb some colours from the light hitting them and reflect the remainder. That's what gives them their colour, the bit that gets reflected.
Most surfaces scatter that reflected light, since they aren't very smooth (at a microscopic level), so you don'y see much in the way of reflected images in them. However, mirrors are designed to be as smooth as possible, so tend to reflect light at the same angle, thus producing images.
I am being a bit simplistic here, but am trying to make the concept clearer to those with less knowledge of light physics than me, and I'd be the 1st to admit that my understanding is only surface-deep.

Anyway, what all this means is that setting the diffuse (and ambient, for that matter) colours on the mirror to black give you better reflections.
However, if you want to get a reflection in (eg) a highly polished bronze armour breast-plate, then set the diffuse to a bronze colour..:-))

(That's enough for now. I'll shut up.)

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 09/16/2005 16:10

that's good additional info Diolma - if you put the Diffuse as white rather than black, would it not have the same effect? - I guess any Diffuse/Ambient colours in between just tint the reflection ?

@ssween: No If you set diffuse to white, it will wash out the reflection. You can use this to degredate the mirror effect (try setting the diffuse to mid-grey, then plugging a noise/granite node into the diffuse value:-)). But be prepared to wait for a considerable time for the render....

For full mirror effects, almost everything other than the reflection node must be zero (black).

Cheers,
Diolma
Edited to add - at least I THINK that's true. I just realised I've never tried it. Something for me to play with next time..

Message edited on: 09/16/2005 17:22

just tried it with black and white - see what you're saying about it looking washed out - i guess it depends though on lights and what else is in the scene on which looks better - black certainly looked better with 2 cubes in an empty scene with the default lighting definitely something to tinker about with on a dull sunday afternoon cheers Sean

Sean, maybe think of it like this: the raytrace bit does the reflections, but the square (or whatever object you've got the reflect plugged into) also adds it's own stuff to the result. So if the square has it's own diffuse and/or ambient, that'll show AS WELL as the reflections, and will also affect the reflection quality. Can be very useful in some circumstances (but infuriating/frustrating in others..) Cheers, Diolma

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1039018&Start=1&Artist=Jim+Burton&ByArtist=Yes