Hi, Well I'm using RDNA's rusty P6 materials and it produces these weird lines on the curtains... tried the same one on the wall and no lines (original choice is on the wall in the pic) any ideas? The mat itself has AO "on" and the single scene light has AO "on" as well.... Gerard

a different rdna rusty mat with AO... I can almost live with this but I'm wondering why it's happening!! P.S. the lines are on the curtain just near the curtain rod now in case it's not noticable! :)

One problem is that you're using AO on the materials as well as the scene light. Should be either or. Basically, you should use either the AO node on each material (which will allow you to adjust the parameters individually for every object), or you should use it on the diffuse IBL light without any AO nodes on the materials, which would distribute the AO over the entire scene in the same way. Using both is a double whammy, and one is just going to cancel out the other anyway. That said, it looks like a bias problem. Try increasing the bias.

Good points maxxxmodelz. Don't use both at the same time. One thing that helps to make the decision whether to use AO on a light or on a material surface is knowing that doing it scene wide on a light will require the raytracing engine to compute the effect only once. If you put it on a surface material, Poser will need to compute it for each material separately. That might take much longer, depending on how many surfaces you use the effect. While it looks best on the IBL, any light type will allow you to activate the global AO. Uli

I tried it with AO off on the material surface as well and still the same result... I'll increase the bias and see what happens!

Hmmm... not the bias... shadows aren't "on" anyway... this is really weird!

Does the material have displacement? If not, you might try adding just a touch of displacement, and make sure it's turned on in the renderer. If there's a bump channel, just run a wire from the bump node to the displacement node, and set the value very low.

ghelmer, you say "shadows aren't "on" anyway..." - does that mean you tried to adjust the shadow bias? If yes, that was not what maxxxmodelz was talking about. He was talking about the Ambient Occlusion bias (hit the 'Scene AO Options' button on the light properties tab). He's right, you might have some self shadowing going on there. Another thing to try on that dialog is to play with the Distance parameter (try lowering it first). Uli

Ahhh! I get ya!! Dang! I'm glad I asked about this... learning something new here!! Thanks you two!! And maxxx, I gotta tell ya that I love your Princess Orlana gallery pic!! Thanks again guys!! Gonna try the AO options now! G