a good and simple tutorial to make a HDRI in photoshop 
www.3dtotal.com/

bagginsbill.

if we have a ENVsphere then it will reflect on silver object. if we connect an image in the reflect node if will not show in the render because the ENV sphere is around our object. if we turn off the ENVsphere then it will render with the image that is connected in the reflect node.

i am asking now: can we somehow connect nodes that we FORCE a material to use the image that is connected in the reflect node.?other nodes on the other hand would use the ENVsphere.

is this possible?

You don't need a reflect node for this. The "Background" channel of the Reflect node is just what is used when the Reflect node cannot find something to hit.

To force the reflection of an image map in the material, just connect the Sphere_Map to the Reflection_Color. (Or any channel, really. The Reflection_Color is just added to the final render the same as Refraction_Color, Alternate_Specular, Alternate_Diffuse, and Ambient_Color) No ray-tracing or reflection is needed for this calculation.

You can use the same exact equirectangular images with my Environment Sphere or with the Sphere_Map node.

aha so it can no be done.

i was just thinking in doing a fast FAKE blury reflected material. so for a perfect mirror material i would use the ENVsphere. for my blury material the image in the material room. but i would still like raytraced reflection.

i will try to find another way.

i was looking at this.
www.castleposer.co.uk/articles/shader_blur.html

and i was thinking in making more layers of the reflection and then offset it in every direction and then blend it together.

but of course it can not be done.

i am trying now something.

i have 4 reflect nodes. and everyone has a different sofftness setting. then i use 3 blender nodes with value 0,5 to blend them together.  in close up it looks like small nosise. but if its far behind it doesnt look good.
plus i dont think it renders faster then just one node with more rays. will do more testing.

a nice article about reflection and car paint.
www.fxguide.com/article482.html

this is a really good tip for beauty reflection
''Then there was a second stage consisting of beauty lighting. "This is the stage that makes it look not only real but beautiful and here the team used techniques learned from their experience with car commercials," says Morton. So the team used long digital lighting boxes, "which is what makes a car look so great, producing these long gradated reflections".''

i just noticed something.
when you connect the image or nodes to the reflect background then the softness wont work.

i guess because the softness works with rays. and what you connect in the background is just projected.

right? 

Quote - There are 5 typical interactions that light ...  Please follow the link to my tutorial.

Updated link: www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php

you need to use the reflect node on the eyes. eyes have reflection.

Yep - that's how car advertisements are made. They hang light boxes (cloth with lights inside) around the car.

Quote - with the help of BB i found a way to control bright reflection in the eyes.
in this pic you can see that i have 3 props with  different shape infront of my figure. they dont cast shadows. in the material room i made everything zero. ambient is 2-3. its very bright. its brigter then white. 

You can create an envsphere map and an ibl with these 3 props, you have them on the reflexion and less props in the scene

IBL?
this is a fast and very fake way to make some ''HDR'' on the eyes. you know with HDR you get superbright lights or reflection. 

Even with the genibl from BB ?

i am talking about reflection. not lighting. IBL is used for lighting. you can fake global lighting with an IBL. its pretty good.

Yes i know you're talking reflexion, i say you can use the gen ibl with a reflective environment , then you transform the render with hdrshop to a map for the envsphere !

Stupid question ... Have you more than one raytrace bounce ?

2

Quote - Yes i know you're talking reflexion, i say you can use the gen ibl with a reflective environment , then you transform the render with hdrshop to a map for the envsphere !

aha i understand now. yeah thats a good tip.

thanks.

Cause you have the reflexion on the eyes, on the glasses and the refraxion, try 4 ...

Guys you seemed to missed something I said in another thread just the other day.

In Poser, when you use Refraction in a material, it does not make the material pass light as would happen in real physics. Poser will still make it cast a shadow. If you use Transparency it does not cast a shadow.

This is one of the reasons that so many beginners give up on the material room. It is not intuitive. If you make something be glass, it should behave like glass. It does not.

I know how to make a Refractive glass that does not cast a shadow in Poser. It is not easy. Not easy at all. Oh, and while you're at it, this glass must be gamma corrected.

I will wait to see if you can find a way. If nobody can do it, you will appreciate me even more when I reveal how it is done. If somebody can do it, then they will be required to participate more and I shall have some help.

And I do not mean that you should disable shadows for this prop. I mean how to make a shader that displays bent light rays when you look through it but does not cast a shadow.

in one thread i asked about lashes not casting shadows.

you said something about connecting the refract node to the transparency  and make it 0,99. i tryed but i didnt have luck. i know that i did something wrong.

 for glasses we dont need shadows for the glass.

why is the cornea not making a shadow on the iris when we are using a refract node for the eyes? 

It actually is, sometimes. In such cases I rely on the IBL to light the iris, and I increase the Diffuse_Value on the iris to compensate.

Depending on the distance between cornea and iris, the shadow ray bias might be ignoring the cornea.

hmmm i sometimes used shadow buas 0,8 or 1 and i never got shadows on the cornea.

i guess i got lucky.

bagginsbill i am still trying to make something that you talked weeks ago. connecting the refract node to the transparency  and make it 0,99. i think you said that that way we could have reflections on the glass but without shadows.

can you please show a screenshot because i can not make it to work.

The Poser "Transparency" effect cannot bend light, nor color it. If you wish to make a material that colors (tints) the light seen through the surface, or you need to bend the light rays, you have to use a Refract node.

But you run into a problem. A transparent material will not cast a shadow, but a refracting material will cast a shadow. So how do you refract without casting a shadow? You need to use transparency but that has the wrong information coming through - it is not colored and it is not bent. How do you get Poser to not cast a shadow and not show the straight transparency, either?

The attached render shows two squares. The one on the left is just using a Refract node, tinted by a light blue color, with some bump to vary the bending of the light. But it casts a shadow. How do you make it behave like the one on the right?

You use 99% transparency and two Refract nodes. One Refract node uses an IOR of 1.0, which means it does not bend the light. Basically, it gives us information about what the transparency effect is generating for the material. If we subtract this from the output, using the right amount as a multiplier, we can exactly cancel out the data coming from the transparency effect.

So I take my Refract node with the data I want (colored blue and an IOR of 1.3) and I subtract the other Refract node (untinted and no bend). This produces a color which is the difference between what I want and what I'm getting from transparency.

The only remaining problem is that the transparency effect is giving very little weight to the color I want. In fact, I only get 1% of that. So I multiply it with 99. This gives me 99 times the color I want minus 99 times the color I'm getting.

The transparency effect then multiplies that with .01, yielding .99 times what I want minus .99 times the transparency color. Since the transparency is 99% or .99 times the color behind the prop, I exactly cancel the effect.

I'm still getting a 1% shadow but that is so weak you can't see it. And I'm also only getting 99% of the color I want, but that is so close to the color I want it works fine.

You may be wondering this: If I don't want a shadow, why don't I just disable casting a shadow for this prop?

The answer is - sure do that - if it is ok that the entire prop does not cast a shadow, such as a one-sided square.

But - if you have a prop that has multiple material zones, and you want some of the materials to cast a shadow, but not others, you can't get away with disabling shadows for the whole prop. You want parts of it to cast a shadow. So you have to leave shadows enabled.

thanks for this. this is amaaaaaaaaazing. i will play with this now.

i think this is very interesting and practical for fast rendering.
www.illuminatelabs.com/support/tutorial-folder/tutorials-turtle-3/reflective-occlusion/

its called reflection occlusion. i dont know exactly how it works but i think its similar to AO. the cone angle is just smaller. from what i understand you can make it looks like self-reflection one bounce.
i think this could be used for brushed metal,blurry metal,......

here is even an animation clip. i think it looks pretty good ans its faster then soft reflection
www.illuminatelabs.com/support/tutorial-folder/tutorials-turtle-3/reflective-occlusion/finalanim.mov

i guess this could be used in poser right? would it be hard to make ? i am so angry that i didnt find this faster and mentioned on this forum. maybe it would be inside poser 8.

ku ku ??

Nope.

nope what ? :)

Quote - maybe it would be inside poser 8.

Nope.

you mean nope for   '' i am so angry that i didnt find this faster and mentioned on this forum. maybe it would be inside poser 8.''

i think this would be a great node. '' reflection-occlusion node''. we would use it for subtle reflections like brushed metal. and we would also get cheap and fast blurry self-reflection.because even if i now use a blurry image i still can not use soft  self-reflection because it takes to long to render.

could we add this with python?

was in poser pro 2010 something changed so what we could add reflection occlusion to the shaders?

Nope.

I hope to discuss quite a few material room changes with SM for Poser 9 and Poser Pro 2011.

Maybe we should have a new thread for what we want to see for new nodes, and new behaviors in the materials. For behaviors, I'm thinking the idea that a shader can be loaded without disturbing the chosen texture maps that are already there.

Firefly need ONE person, Bagginsbill, to have great render ?

Who is Smith Micro ? A shit ? I dont know ...

Seriously i'm borred tio see always Mr Bagginsbill spaming all the subjects ... you can ban me if you want, but it change nothing ...

Bagginsbill=troll ... Poser 9 poserpro2011 ... Jerk your money by the window its more easy !!!

That's all folks !
 

Anthanasius, what are you going on about?*

he's far from a troll! he's the most helpful person round here!

if you don't like his posts, ignore them. the rest of us find them useful.*****

**