Attached Link: ftp://ftp.web-runners.com/shadowspazz.avi

Okay, I've finally put up a short clip of this shadow anomaly. An anomaly, I might add, which I can't hardly believe no one has noticed/complained/explained before. Well, here it is in all it's glory. The avi is at 640x480 so you can see EXACTLY what I'm talking about. ***NOTES*** - Pay special attention to the shadows under the BOTTOM LIP, NOSE, and THE EYELIDS !! You can't miss the "dancing shadows." Another way to describe it is it looks like the shadows have been hit with electricty. - This is NOT an isolated incident ... although it seems to mostly affect animations invloved with facial shots. (For example, in an earlier animation with the same setup but from a different angle, I did not notice shadow spasticness on other body parts or objects. - No, animated lights were NOT present. Animation was turned off for all lights. - The map size for shadows was set to 1024. Can anyone explain WHY this is happening? Has anyone else experience this bizzare shadow characteristic? It's incredibly annoying ... and I sincerely hope this is not just a fact when animating with Poser. Your input and help is GREATLY appreciated. -Tim (The file is little over 1 MEG.)

I think you need to e-mail Curiouslabs tech support about this, they are the only ones who would know what it is.

They just need a new rendering engine, its pretty simple as that. I wouldn't expcet to see a patch to fix this. ML

Tim, try this. Open the Animation control window, go down to where it says shadowlit cameras 1 to whatever. Select them all beginning at the first frame and going to the last frame of the animation. While these frames are selected click on the keyframe minus button to remove all key frames and then click on the constant section button. This will clear the shadowlit cameras. Now render the avi again. If that fixed the problem, okay. If not, then you will need to do as Jeff mentioned and contact Curiouslabs about it. Regards, Rob

Thanks for the input everyone ... but one question: So are you saying you have seen this shadow weirdness before or not? Like I said, I find it hard to believe anyone rendering Poser animations would NOT, given the fact that it does it to me fairly consistently, especially with facials. -Tim PS> Rob ... going to try that now. THANKS!! PSS> Anyone know how good CL's support is?

Tim, yes I have had this happen to me - along with some other strange stuff such as getting a render where the texture does not show up on the hands and feet. Really weird - eh? But this is the fix I found and it always worked for me.

You're gonna see weirdness like this because they use a trick to render shadows and not a true raytrace engine. Basically they render the scene from the light sorce to create a map of what is shadowed and what is not. Then, as the render the scene they either reverse project the pixel from the shadow map into the scene to determine obscurity or they render the shadow map as a polygon with an alpha on it right to the scene. In either case, the results will be inaccurate to say the least. What they are not doing is what higher end packages like 3d studio do when rendering shadows.

Shadownet: (Wow, what an appropriate name for this topic!!)Rendering a couple of seconds worth now with your suggestion. However, I am not hopeful since there were absolutely NO KEYFRAMES whatsoever for the shadowlit cameras. However, I'm hoping changing the default keyframe at frame #1 to constant will do the trick. Although, from the other posts it sounds like a defect in Poser.

Also, if it is a defect in poser, WOW ... what a monumental defect. It makes animation in Poser -- realistic animation anyway -- pretty lame. Shadows add so much realism and provide so much style and mood to a piece, it takes away a lot to turn them off. I think Curious Labs overlooked their value. But having them on and dancing all over the place is waaay to distracting. Talk about between a rock and hard place. Although, I must say if you're rendering out to 320x240 it becomes much less noticeable. But forget it for TV work! Thanks Mason for your input as well.

Well, unfortunately that did not work. Any one else have any ideas out there? (I'm going to call CL tomorrow.) Here is another observation ... if you watch the short AVI again you will notice that the deep shadow(s) that cover the eyes at times do not exhibit this spastic electricity. They are simply deep, realistic-looking shadows. It only happens on the fringes of the shadows from the lips, eyelashes and nose. Weird! Anyone have an idea WHY? -Tim

Okay before I say "Uncle" on this let me ask you one more question - but admittedly I am not so optimistic now. You said antimated lights were not present, therefore the shadows being generated should be the same through all frames according to how the lights/shadows are set in frame one. Go back into the Animation window and expand all the lights (click on the arrow thingie) and see if you have any key frames showing after frame one. If so try the same thing as you did with the shadowlit with the lights and clear all the frames but frame one and make that light constant. (If I understand your setup correctly this should not affect the lighting for the scene - only any changes to the lighting and shadow occuring after frame one) I have also had to do this before as well, but usually the fix to the shadowlite gets it. Also, I don't know that it would have made a difference but it might, normally after I apply the "fix" to the shadowlit (and/or lights) I save the file, close Poser, reboot my Computer, and start Poser clean. I do not know that this matters but I do know that I have had problems similar to this and these are the things I did to fix it - and they have worked for me. So I wish you the best of luck, and hope it might work for you this time as well. I'd say give it one more try. Do the shadowlits again (just to be safe) along with the lights this time, close down and reboot - and run another test avi and see what happens. Less that optimistic, :o( Rob

I must say this once a week here ;-) TURN OFF THE SHADOW CASTING FOR ALL OF THE LIGHTS EXCEPT ONE OF THEM!!!!!!!!!!! You would need a one meg shadow map to do close ups like this with all the lights casting shadows. ScottA