Hi. I bet this is a common issue with a common sollution which not has dawned on me yet.
I have a very nicely waxed hardwood floor. I have a wall in  the back of the scene. too much of the wall is reflected by the floor. I mean - I only want the part of the wall that is close to the floor to  be reflected. I could make the whole wall NOT visible in  ray  tracing, but I would lose my relection of  the bottom part of the wall along with the top. How can  i plug in some sort of raytrace masking gradient to  the wall material? Note:  i do not want to do any masking to  the reflectivity of the floor - i will  have figures standing more in the forefront of the scene and their shoes will  need to be reflected by the floor area that is at the forefront of the scene.

Thanks

Hi santicor,

I wrote about this effect and provided some shaders before, in this thread:

bagginsbill ( or other shader gurus) - reflection "depth" ?

In real life this happens on a floor because of two things. First the Fresnel effect, which is that reflection amount varies with viewing angle. Second is that things that are farther from the floor are blurred because the floor is bumpy. These are "soft" reflections and can be somewhat simulated in Poser, but not as well as in other applications.

You asked for a shader applied to the wall to control this, but that isn't really achieved very easily without some serious hackery. Instead, you should set up a proper Fresnel-like shader on the floor, using the Edge_Blend node. The linked thread shows how and why and some examples of what you can get with it.

If that doesn't quite work out, come back and I'll see if I can deal with the specifics of your situation with you.

Ah thank you Mr. Baggins Bill -

( Once again we are faced with  -  Many threads - and so many topics already discussed- how to better  search  and catalogue  your past  threads should be the focus of someone at Rendo)

Yes, Fresnel on the floor!  still kind of new to me... now I will learn about it and apply it .