Ok I have a lot of backgrounds I've collected over the years but never use because I don't no how to make reflections.  I have PS CS2 and Poser7.  I see alot of great Art using backgrounds with water and reflections in water.  Can anyone steer me to a great tutorial or sitemail how they do it.  Maybe I can finally get some use out of these great piece of art I have.  Thanks for looking and any help.

bonita aka drag

There's another thread on here relating to water.  I advise you to check that out for the best ways to incorporate water into your renders.

Using background images alone won't give satisfactory results.  Incorporating them into an environment and using IBL will improve matters.

Okay, if you want to do pure Poser water (and not use a postwork photoshop plugin), then you'll need a few things. First up is Bagginsbill's Environment sphere:

http://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/free-stuff/environment-sphere

You can try your backgrounds on the sphere, or else search equitrangular photo-images to use on the sphere:

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=equirectangular

(Hint: the larger the image the less fuzzy it will render and if you're doing this commercially you have to check with the authors of the photos on their crediting requirements)

Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark Bagginsbill's discussion on Water here in the Forum.  But you can do a forum search on "Bagginsbill" or "Water" and you should find it. I'll post an image I saved from the discussion on the material settings to get you started.  For the Water Plane itself you can either use the Poser default ground or the hirez cloth plane from the primitives library (I use the cloth plain). And a big hint here, make sure that shadows are turned off on the cloth plane.

Yes, the nodes look complicated, but it doesn't take long to assemble this in the advanced material room. Have the photo of the settings open in an art program while you have Poser open and refer back and forth. This is how I do it. May take you 20 to 30 minutes to assemble depending on your familiarity with the nodes.  Once you assemble it, save it to your material library. Make a folder in your material library and name it Bagginsbill's Water.

smirk Be assurred that this thread will not self destruct in 10 seconds........

Good luck!

Thanks Sam and Latex,  I found the tut by bagginsbill and will give it a go.  You can't learn if you you don't give it a try....so here I go getting my feet wet lol.