Doing Promo renders which means doing renders over and over and over again. Started seeing these artifacts. Didn't notice them before. Show up a little in P5/Poser 4 Renders, more in P5/Firefly and much more in P6/Firefly Automatic setting. Also in P6/Poser 4 renders as well. Different variation every time. Once in P6 they turned white!!! What is this? I've done some figures and never had this garbage before. It's not on the texture. This is StephPetite. She's been pretty well distorted, but not to the extent that would cause this. I don't think... Is it me? Is it Poser? Is it the mesh? I'm a little sick over this because I've worked on her for a long time and am finished. At least I thought I was finished.

might be math/flicker artifact. the usual two approaches: 1) lower the bias setting on lights 2) scale everything in the scene up, say to 1000% in the meantime, if you are in a rush, why not fix in post just for your promo images. ::::: opera :::::

In addition to that, it looks like you might be rendering in draft mode ... the aliasing on the neck and the lack of detail around the eyelashes are what lead me to suspect that. While it's not related to the black spots, you may want to check your render settings to increase the quality setting more toward "production" to get rid of the rough edges there. As far as postworking, it's usually not a good idea for promos ... it could erroneously give folks the impression that you are trying to cover up texture imperfections vs. rendering imperfections.

No, I know about the eyelash problem in draft mode. Checked it in production mode and still the same. This is P5. Both P4 and Firefly. Going to defrag. Here's a pic of the mesh and texture in Deep Paint. You can see that there's nothing on the texture. I don't alter things like textures in promos. Don't want to misrepresent. But this is something that I've not ever had before. I've rendered this character so many times before in working on her. Today, when I need her to be as good as possible for the promo images, I have this stuff. Nuts!

Sorry, one more thing. I also see this stuff in a render of the top of the hand. It's near the inside of the fingers but more on top and not where the seam is. Just something extra to contend with.

Sorry Atelier, my response about the postworking was more directed toward operaguy, as he made that suggestion. Should have clarified that. 8-) I think he is correct in that they are something to do with lighting artifacts. Try making the alterations he suggested, it might help.

yeah, I forgot about that obvious reality that you want to be able to say 'no postwork.'

It looks like the kind of artifacts you get when your bump strength is too high. You probably have to adjust the bump setting. Poser 6 uses a different scale than Poser 4/5.

Hey, I love postwork. I do more correcting with the Liquify tool in PSD than anything else. OK, but I'm in the dark about scaling everything up in the scene 1000%. And there's only one thing in the scene. The figure. Another thing. I used Danae's lights for this. Then used the Poser default crummy lights. Same thing. I think I'll defrag, backup, and start again tomorrow. Because I was in P5 for hours today, often leaving it to go do something else, coming back to save a render, then on and on like that. It may be something as weird as a memory glitch or something. Early in the day I didn't see the artifacts. Late in the day I did. So got a bunch of renders that were OK. It seems that it just got worse and worse. But I'll go fool with the lighs and see if there's a difference.

Thanks randym77. I'll go set the bumps lower and see what happens. I usually have them set to about 1.00000 for P4 render. For P5 a lot less, about 0.0100000. OK so I can't remember how many zeros. Going to remove them completely and see what happens. Didn't think of that either. Got upset and got into a tizzy.

Poser 6 uses "real world scale" for bumps. The default is feet, so a typical P5 0.01 bump strength is huge in P6 - 0.01 feet, or over a tenth of an inch.

If you change the Poser scale to inches, 0.01 for the bump is about right...but Poser 6 helpfully converts your bumps strengths when you convert to inches, and you end up with 0.12 bump strengths, unless you change them back.

Message edited on: 04/17/2005 23:27

That's good to know for P6. I'm slowly starting to feel comfortable in it but haven't even cracked the book yet. You were right. Bump strength was too high. I was wrong for the P5/Firefly settings. I had bump set to 0.1000000. Changed it to 0.0100000 and it's fine so far.

1) lower the bias setting on lights Opera - I agree. I'm glad to see someone say this, because I keep reading recommendations to INCREASE the bias setting to alleviate these black patches - whilst decreasing is what seems to work for me (often with render time increasing substantially). I'd love to hear some definitive advice about this black patch/bias relationship if possible.

Oops. I thought you were using P6. Wasn't reading carefully enough. Glad the advice was helpful anyway, LOL!

Yet another oops! I've just had another look at this bias setting thing - and now INCREASING does seem to be what's required (at least in a close up facial render). However, I'm 'almost' sure on one occasion I recall the opposite - where it was reduction of bias (in P6 AO lighting) which seemed to cure some black patches in a render for me. Now I'm wondering if this was the case or whether my bad eyes just didn't read the numbers correctly!

I got the information from Stewar. He says "decreasing". Personally, I usually solve this problem not by adjusting the bias, but rather by scaling up. The reason: I can't figure out if stewar is correct or not...I HAVE solved the artifact problem by turning down the bias on the lights....but it does NOT work every time. There may be more than one variety of artifact. I am working on an animation right now that is subject to flicker, and is proving difficult to solve. While others (such as Maxxmodel) are reporting NO flicker in animations using IBL/AO, in Poser6 I can definately report that the flicker problem with depth shadow lighting remains a plague. I'll comment more when my current render is finished (about 15 hours to go) ::::: Opera :::::

Opera, Could the flicker be coming from the newer camera settings? I noted the camera now has new settings ... Best Wishes, Rance

Atelier_Ariel is in P4 and P5, not in P6, so any 'new camera settings' in P6 would not pertain here. Were you referring to new settings in P6? And what are they? ::::: Opera :::::

Sorry, yes, I was thinking about Poser 6. I've not read into the books that much yet. Slow to start really playing with the new software. Rather than hook up my old runtimes I removed earlier versions and determined to start with a clean installation and so I'm reinstalling EVERYTHING. Took it as a chance to clean house. The new cameras have shutter speeds and other goodies that (I thought) were new and may have effect in animation. Sorry if I typed out of turn. I will sit on my hands more in future until I get my feet under me. These forums are great places to learn when I read and DON'T type ... You all do great work and I thank you for sharing. Best Wishes, Rance

Since I've posted I've read more about the artifacts. So there are artifacts and artifacts. The ones in the examples are caused by the bump value being too high. Easy to find that out when I decreased it and they went away. The others that look like smudges seem to be from the Shadow Min Bias set too high. I think... Now a P6 question which is also a P5 question. Do you attach the bump to the Bump channel or the Displacement channel? I've done both and don't really see a difference. Is it just a personal preference? And why is the Gradient Bump still there? I thought it was only for P4 bum bumps.