https://www.posetteforever.com/viewtopic.php?f=68&t=4059&p=45690#p45690
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Nik
Monday, 24 January 2022, 02:59 PM

On Reflection : Hid In Plain Sight...
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I keep trying to make stuff 'mirrored', but what works for one model won't work for another.

Worse, I neither understand what I've done right nor what has gone wrong.

Part of problem is a great chunk of Poser manual's 'Material Room' documentation describes the wondrous, one-click facilities provided by 'wacros'.

Which I could not find...
I shrugged, decided that was due to removal of deprecated Python version.

This latest foray into reflectivity etc was spawned by a MMD/PMX freebie, a panel van. Actually one of four versions in set, sharing many parts. Converted to OBJ+MTL using 3DOC($$) or free PMX Editor, there were a few glitches, a few texture tweaks required, but it rendered okay in Poser.

Except for the 'wing mirrors', which remained stubbornly 'matt'.

They, at least, had their own material call, but used a complex texture map, which lacked any obvious mirror shapes. Took a 'binary chop' with half a dozen iterations to locate...

So, not only did I need reflection, but I also had to mask the effect.

I found several tutorials by JCH, sadly only for P5/P6, and the Material room has evolved [b][i]far [/i][/b]since then.

I'd just been wrangling those silly horizontal dots marking hidden menus at foot of Library, having mis-clicked them, when I noticed similar vertical dots at right of Material Room, Advanced.

Um, yeah, due Covid, I'm a year over-due updating my arm-length-focus 'VDU' glasses...
But, surely not ?
Indeed, like Poe's infamous 'Purloined Letter', wacros have been there all along...
D'uh...

An evening of experimentation ensued.
Eventually, I found the 'reflection' wacro spawned three 'nodes', per blue trail, but I could dispense with its two subsidiaries. If masking required, add new node, 2d-textures, image map. Drag its 'port' to reflection value, per lower green trail. Link to 'reflection' appears automatically. Add image call. White reflects...

Care: render default may change to firefly, as wacros over-ride preferences. Just re-select superfly.

I could not make Poser Primitives' 2-sided square behave, my simple 'map' refused to wrap correctly. Will explore. Single-sided square was okay. Box was [b][i]mostly [/i][/b]okay, but showed artefacts. Will explore these, too. And I must tweak 'metallicity' and 'smoothness', where-ever they may lurk, to minimise the ripples / freckles...

 [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/680/combomap.jpg[/img] 

 [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/680/clipboard01_1643035241_953300.jpg[/img] 

 [img]https://www.posetteforever.com/files/posted_images/680/untitled3.jpg[/img]

Very much 'Work in Progress', but several 'pitons' up steep learning curve...


