Hi everyone,
Does anyone know of a way to make an object reflect other objects around it? For example, if you look at my latest gallery upload at

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1635805

I like the way it turned out, but the effect I was aiming for was making it look like the spaceship was smooth, shiny metal, and I was hoping that it would have a reflection of the astronaut and the alien. I've recently begun experimenting with different ways of rendering, using the Firefly render engine's settings. I don't really understand the whole concept of ray-tracing - I've read about it here and there in the forums, and I was under the impression that ray-tracing would render reflections -obviously I was way off. I'm hoping someone can explain ray-tracing to me and also let me know if there's a way to render reflections. Thanks everyone -

there is, use raytraced reflections .

in material room attach a lighting node > ray tracing > reflection and set color to white and quality to 1 as a start .

then in render settings make sure you have ray tracing selected .

Ray traced reflections are fairly correct optically, so your objects need to be positioned so reflections would occur naturally. If you need to show a reflection that cant happen in real terms then use a reflection map .

The tricks to Poser reflections:

1.)  Make sure the Raytracing is enabled in the Render Settings.

2.)  Make sure your Material is Reflective.  Post us a screenshot of your Advanced Material Room!

3.) And understanding a Poser scene.  The ends of a Poser scene are empty; null of Objectivity.  Without Objectivity there is nothing to react through with your Reflective Material!  So you need to insure the alien, and everything around him, is angled properly.  If all you want in the reflection is your alien, then you just need to tweak a little; but if you want a background from beinf he alien, in the relfection with him, then you need to add that.  The easiest way to do this is with a Sky Dome.  Or you could you any Envirmonment you want, as long at is totally encompassing.  I like Sky Domes because the mapping technology, for the inside of a sphere is very advanced; you do'nt even know you're looking into sphere:

(Care of patorak)

May aslo help to have at least one light set to raytrace.

Hey Teyton!

I never have any lights set to Raytracing, as I believe that is just for Shadows; which I never use; especially with reflections .

Yes, it is for accurate shadows and reflection (at least, that's what I was always told). Without it, the reflections can be a bit blurry I think. Been awhile since I've had to do raytracing and it doesn't come up much at work unless we're doing testing.

raytracing in poser 7 (and earlier) is for reflection and refraction.
in most up-to-date renderers, raytracing is for everything else as well.

And for shadows and for ambient occlusion. You can have depth-mapped shadows of course instead of raytraced, but they are less more accurated and ambient-occlusion doesn't work at all without raytracing in poser7. Raytracing is a technique that's older than Poser, but only available in poser since version 5.
"Simply" said it's an algorithm that takes actually calculates a ray of light that comes from a pixel in the renderscreen and hits the camerapoint. The algorityhm looks at all the objects and figures and their materialshader and the lights in the scene, and by calculating the angles between the lights, the other object, the camerapoint and considering all the materialsettings, it defines the actual brightness and colour of the pixel. If the ray hits nothing it gets the colour of the background, if the ray is blocked by objects and can't reach a light it is a shadow.  In fact it is pure light physics.

If you don't have the sky dome feature:

Another method of casting reflections

One thing I'm experimenting with at the moment are mirror reflections.  It may or may not be what you need but here goes.

Make a primitive cylinder (this will be your reflective surface).  In your materials' room set the ambient color of the cylinder if setting the ambient color to white washes out your detail try setting it  to BLACK and zero out everything else except reflectivity, set that to 1.  Add a ight node node (raytrace>reflectivity).  Right now don't worry about refraction since it really slows down rendering time (at least when I tried it) set it to zero with no nodes attached.

Start with two lights, one in from of the cylinder and one directly behind it. The KISS principle.
Set the cylinder properties to do not cast shadows (this will allow the light behind the cylinder to pass through.

In front of the cylinder, place your object you want reflected in the cylinder.

Place your camera between the cylinder and your object and aimed at the cylinder (If you dont want the object in the scene).

For the time being set both lights with raytracing on.

Now the trick,  you can brighten or dim the image in the cylinder by adjusting the light BEHIND the cylinder.

You will need to render in production mode with raytracing on to see your image

Your cylinder will be black except for the figure (as everybody stated, you don't have anything else to reflect hence black.

The figure will of course look distorted because of the cylinder's shape.

As you put more objects in the scene, the more will show up.  If  you want the cylinder to be silver, try placing a white cube in front of everything and large enough to cover the cylinder.

The key to this reflectivity is again: the cylinder that does not cast shadows and the light behind it shining through it to your object and the cube illuminating them.

This should work beginning with Poser 5 and up (I don't P5 has this neat sphere thing).

Just another way to do reflections.  Jan

Whoa.... I'm gonna try that

Another way to avoid a Sky DOme is with a Reflection Map, that actually makes use of Poser Sphereical mathematic(Like as if a Sky Dome were present,) though this is'nt as accurate/actual as it does not use Raytracing. 

Lets say I have a golden reflective material, and a bright blue sky; well, after raytracing, this equals green metal ;  P!  So to keep my blue sky, and make my gold very vivid; I take the textuer I would use to make the Sky Dome yellow, and plug it into the Reflection node(of the reflective material)  That will override a reflective material's looking for Raytracing...Really simple to impliment; but lets see some Material Room Screenshots!

Before you go crazy with my procedure, one change, change the Diffuse color to black, specular color to black and leave the Ambient color alone (should be black by default).  Wish I could go back and edit it.

Hmm, Angel, gonna give your procedure a try too.  Haven't tried another procedure, placing a texture node image directly into the reflections color channel and perhaps adjusting the u and v size.  Strange how one idea leads to another---Jan

There is a whole section in this thread about Reflections

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2722867