i keep getting black spots and polygons all over figures
when using firefly, tried for 2 days and overnite to no avail,plus it is still to damn slow for my needed workflow,
so i am back to using the p 4 renderer for now,but that means i cant use the realskin shaders etc by faceoff and other merchants-any suggestions for settings would be a help-i've got a 10,000+ page comic i started drawing 15 years ago and have been doing it over in 3d for 4 years now i would like to get it rendered before i'm 90!

Are you using AO or raytraced shadows? Black spots can be a result of a bias that is too low. Go to the properties of your lights and try increasing it, that could cure it.

cheers, i'll give that a go,let you know what happens thanks!

I haven't had much luck using skin shaders in P6. They make Vicky black. Not African, I mean a weird kind of blue-black. Drow Vicky?

As Stewer suggests, increasing bias and decreasing range in AO helps with problems like that. Sometimes you have to play with the AO settings to get what you want. :-) "I haven't had much luck using skin shaders in P6." There was a thread about this. Apparently the skin shader in P6 was changed, and if you import older scenes that were shaded in P5 with that shader, it will render wrong. Was the skin shader you're using applied in P5 originally?

Yes, I have a fairly large collection of P5 MAT files that apply textures using P5 skin shaders. They're all useless with P6? :-(

No, they're not all useless. Most work perfectly fine. However, the skin node in P6 was changed, so that's one which won't translate properly from P5. The rest should be fine.

Ooops... I read your post wrong. You're talking about MAT files with the skin shader in them. Sadly, those WILL be screwed up.

What you might be able to do is replace the skin nodes that are in the MAT files with P6 skin nodes on all the bodyparts, then save the material to the library. P6 allows you to save the ENTIRE figure's materials (all bodyparts) to a "material collection", which is just like having a MAT file, only you apply it now from the material room.

Message edited on: 04/06/2005 06:50

So much for upward compatibility long practiced by all software companys.

Well, I agree it's a bit of a hassle to "swap" out the skin shader on every body part, but once it's done, you never have to do it again. As mentioned, save the figure's new materials using the new 'material collection' feature, and you can add it again any time with one click.

Hey Stewer, are you planning to update your P5 V3 mat files and tutorial, for P6? That tut was a BIG help to me in the past, and I think a P6 version would help a lot of the people struggling with P6 skin shaders..

So what, exactly, must be changed to use the skin shader node? I usually use the method in the Enmeshed "Shader Magic" tutorial, with the skin maps attached to the skin shader node. Can you not do that any more?

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Thanks. Judging from that thread you linked to, no, it is no longer possible to wire it the way you could in P5. Looks like you have to hook the skin shader to a diffuse node, then to a texture map. It won't work hooked directly to the texture map any more. Perhaps a bug that will be fixed?

Not a bug, by design it is different. The P5 skin node had some serious problems. Unfortunately when bugs are exploited, sometimes they get fixed. Nerd3D

Ack. All those MAT files, useless now. Maybe MAT Pose Edit will add a convert P5 to P6 option?

There may be more changes in the skin shader. Lots of folks don't like the changes. If you all file bugs (Be nice!) they might change the values to line up better with the old values. But I imagine you will probably still wan't to plug a diffuse node into the skin input somewhere. If you are all are really nice you migh get the coders to include a "legacy" skin node. Nerd3D