All of a sudden I am having problems with the Main Camera in Poser 6. This just started and I have the SRs.

Here are 4 pictures. When the camera is set at 38mm, her cat suit looks funny, but in the 2nd picture, when I render it, it looks fine.

In the third picture I try to adjust only the 38mm (focus) to a higher number such as 70 or 80. Her face becomes distorted.

Image 4 is how it looks rendered. It looks normal.

Any idea please of how this may be fixed?

Thank you in advance,

Nancy (SophiaDeer)

Message edited on: 02/27/2006 22:20

Same thing happening here, and don't know why.

Thanks for your reply, Deecey. I wonder what the trouble is? My video card is on it's last leg and I am going to be getting a new one. I wonder if this may be the cause. Warm Regards, Nancy

Have you played with your "hither" setting? That determines what is displayed based on distance from the object to the camera.

Hi Bobasaur, I have not touched the hither settings ever, but will look into this option. Thank you. Nancy

You're not alone, guys, I've also had this "Dr Who Titles" effect occasionally with P6. It never seems to harm the render, though.

The hither setting does seem to help, but I find it interesting that I only seem to experience this effect on close-fitting clothes (in my case, also a catsuit).

This is possibly an OpenGL issue. You mention 'close-fitting clothes' and this might be an issue of precision and contention between the polygons of the figure and the clothes since they are so close. You will see the same in other 3D apps that use OpenGL for editor view with two objects that are identical and identically placed. It seems even more possible with Poser since its scales are so small, they push the limits of floating point number precison.

I used to have to adjust the hither setting when moving between a full-body camera focal length around 100 and zooming in for midshot like in #3 or closer. Then I just saved these standard camera positions with dots, with adjusted hither positions. But the hither can go haywire if I zoom in and out off of these saved positions. It did freak me out a bit the first time I saw it!

Thank you all so much for your replys. I adjusted the hither setting it this seems to help a lot.

I can't remember the exact place to set this because I'm at work, but this can be fixed in the Render Options panel. I think it's Render Settings>Preview tab, change it from OpenGL mode to Sree(spelling?) mode. That fixed it for me... I was sick of Vicky's teeth jumping out of her head towards me! Karen :-)

Another aspect of hither misadjustment is when the setting is too high, rather than too low (which gives OpenGL mre effects until hither is increased). In the "too high" case, library icons for newly saved items appear blank or with holes in them. OpenGL and renders will show the items correctly, but the library items are created with the SreeD display mode. Switching to SreeD mode and reducing the hither setting until foreground objects are again visible gives proper library icons on subsequent saves. GeoffIX

For the record, the hither setting also has a weird effect on Grouping. If you find that you can't select polys when zoomed in, it may be because the hither setting is interfering. This is weird because if you violate the hither limit, what is supposed to happen is that you "go inside" the mesh (Get a camera too close and you'll see what I mean). But in Grouping view, the problem (selector doesn't appear to work) begins long before you get that close. I don't remember, by the way, whether it doesn't work or just doesn't appear to work. The difference can be disastrous, so be careful if this happens. P6 also has a yon setting, which apparently sets some distance limits. Things that far away disappear. Given the likelihood of bugs being related to new "features," I'm going to twiddle it the next time Vickie's eyes bulge. I have seen this problem with most DAZ figures, and more often with old ones (I still use V2 characters like Canary3D's Deirdre, Catherina Harder's Sara and Ona, and Mehndi's Sugar). Don't recall seeing it with P originals. It's pretty clear that there are some tweaks needed to make old DAZ figures P6 compatible. Maybe someone is working on that? Not DAZ or EF, of course. On the matter of the preview/render difference, I vote OpenGL. I'm about ready to switch to SreeD permanently and find out what I'm giving up. M

I've had this problem too. Seems to be OpenGL related indeed, when I tweaked my Geforce 6800 LE into a QuadroFX 4000 using RivaTuner, the problem went away.

It is openGl based .. I ignore it

gwhicks - thanks for that note on saving library icons. That clears up that mystery!

Hmmm this certainly sounds as though hither (and yon) are acting correctly with SreeD but are being scaled or misinterpreted by OpenGL, which seems to need different settings. I also note that OpenGL previews on the fixed cameras (top, bottom, left, right, etc) which have zero (infinite) focal length seem to take no notice of the hither setting and always display mre patterns on close fitting clothing. Thanks to mickmca for making a connection to the Grouping Tool I'd been struggling with. Hadn't occurred to me to switch to SreeD preview before using it to verify that vertices to be selected were actually visible and not cropped by hither settings when cursing EF for breaking the Grouping Tool. C'est la vie.

I, too, have experienced problems like this in Preview mode in P6 using OpenGL. Usually, after the initial "Huhh?? WTF's going on" reaction, I remember to do a quickie render to see if it's really a problem. If it isn't I ignore it.. (of course, there are times I forget, and keep struggling for a while before realisation sets in, then I curse myself, and continue as above). But I didn't know about the Grouping Tool connection, either, so I also send my thanks to mickmca for pointing it out. Cheers, Diolma

Yep Open GL. You need the video card driver update. If it persists switch to Scree3D. Save in prefs before exiting Poser so you don't have to deal with it again.

Thank you all for your replys. The fan is fried on my old video card and I should be getting a new one Friday. You all have been so helpful...thanks again. Warm Regards, Nancy (SophiaDeer)

kuroyume0161 is right, it's the OpenGL precision giving up here. You can fix it easily by changing the hither and yon parameters of the camera, making their values be closer.

Thank you very much Stewer.

Has anyone experimented (or knows) whether the hither and yon settings are PNU or scaled by whatever metric is selected? If it can be determined exactly, a simple python script should be able to set them for the current camera so that the selected figure's bounding box is not clipped by the camera. This should fix both OpenGL and SreeD problem scenarios (I hope). Not where I can test this ATM.