I'm having this mind numbing rendering problem. These images are straight P4 renders from Poser Artist, so it's the currently patched version. As you can see, the top image has what looks like holes in the mesh and/or rendering errors. There are no holes or reversed normals, of that I'm 100% sure. I've tried the same landscape mesh as all quads and as triangles and still get the same result. In the lower image, all I did was to dolly the camera up a little on the y axis and give it a few degrees of negative pitch. Voila, no more errors. Now, this would be fine if I just wanted to render shots from this one angle, but I don't. Is this some weird rendering bug that only rears its' ugly head every now and then? Does anyone have experience of this sort of thing and if so, how did you overcome it? As I said, the mesh is 100% watertight, so I'm stumped. Any help is greatly appreciated. Stefan

Could it be shadows from the lights might try turning them down on some of the lights.

It really does look like nonplanar quads to me. Triangulation didn't help?

Degenerate faces produce a similar effect, but those aren't affected by camera angle, to the best of my knowledge. Could you run the mesh through UVMapper to check for degenerate facets anyway? The mesh isn't double-sided, is it?

SndCastie, I tried turning off shadows, it didn't help. LittleDragon - yeah I know, it looked like degenerate polys to me too. That's why I turned them into triangles, which still didn't help. And no, the mesh is single sided. After turning them into triangles, the render errors are still exactly the same, to the pixel. LightWave tells me I have no non-planar polys after triangulation, which makes sense, because triangles are always flat. I've also tried some object conversion utilities, all with exactly the same result. That's what makes me think it's a rendering bug.

are you using P5 displacement nodes? I've seen similar effects with displacement nodes.

No, it's a straight P4 render.

You mentioned your Poser is the current patched version, so I assume you downloaded and installed the patches, yes? The reason I ask is because AFAIK, Poser Artist doesn't have any of the patches included in the code so you'd have to install 'em from CL's site anyhow. And the reason I asked that is because I've seen this happen (or similar) in unpatched versions of P4.

Hmm, according to CL's site, the only patch available for Poser Artist is the 1 GB memory updater, which I apparently wouldn't need anyway. The chase goes on, heh. According to my "about" screen, my version is 4.0.3.127.

Message edited on: 01/17/2005 21:09

Have you tried using the grouping tool in Poser itself to look at the mesh? Sometimes it will pick up strange things.

Also... The feet cast no shadows?

I've tried that too. No joy.

She has the special no shadow casting feet. I just realised that - this is getting weird.

I have got that problem before (the mesh holes) when using a displacement map in P5. Not sure if you can use those in Poser Artist but thought it might help. John

John, Poser Artist can't use displacement maps. I don't know what's going on. I'm almost sure it's some sort of rendering anomaly caused by Poser itself, rather than the mesh, as it renders perfectly in LightWave. I guess I'm buggered, at least for the time being.

When i had this problem increasing the resolution fixed it.......Steve

Use a magnet to gently inflate the main problem area, then study the area in wireframe mode in Poser. If Lightwave allows you to subdivide a selected area, try that too.

You mean the resolution of the mesh Steve? I tried that too, although I'll have another look at doing it. The problem is ending with up a really poly heavy object though. Heh, tried that too moochie. I guess I'll nut it out one day.

Something else just occurred to me... I had a really weird problem with an item of clothing which looked strange from a certain angle. When I looked closer, it appeared that some of the verts had decided to take a walk about 300 miles in the Z. I reinstalled the clothes and the problem went away. My point is, it's just possible your ground prop has become corrupt somehow.

SamTherapy has a good point .. particularly if it's a morphing terrain.

I've checked and re-checked the mesh - it's fine. I even did a new real quickie landscape, imported it into Poser, same bloody thing. I have no idea anymore and am less than impressed right now. This is simple stuff that just shouldn't be this difficult.

I hear your pain. I wonder if it's a lighting issue .. well, I mean obviously it's a lighting issue .. but I was thinking of negative light. Those black light sources can create very dark shadows sometimes. Have you tried using the Shadow Cams to see if a single light is pointing at the affected area? Could you post a close-up wireframe pic of the affected foreground area? Seems to be just a few polys involved.

Ah, but there's the rub. It's all sorts of different areas. You can see them in the sample above. The thing is, moving the camera makes them render fine.