Has anyone had the problem shown in the attached image (marked with the red circles)? I have tried different quality settings, different HDRI maps but the spots are always there in exactly the same place. You can't see it in the image, but theres also a similar artifact in the sky so I don't think the problem is with the skin texture.

anyone have any  ideas?

I have never found the need to use HDRI maps in the first place! Most images only need  regular 3 point lighting at the best.

Do you have the problem with 3 Point lighting?

One fix is to turn off Interpolation in your render settings.  Render time will increase a lot.  Setting Interpolation to 100% will make rendering a lot faster, but the ashes might not all vanish.

HDRI works best on reflective objects.

Hmmm, thanks for the suggestion Shonner - I'll try it out.

bwtr - I'll post an image in the gallery tomorrow showing off HDRI lighting. There's no way I could reproduce the effect by using 3 point lighting.

The bottom image is putting a simple left, right and top softbox light setting and rendering at the Carrara default render settings.

(ps the tiles dirtyness is actually in the Carrara original--just dont show up as much!)

Here is the lightbox I mantioned. Add it to your Carrara Scenes/Lighting.

Hope you find it of value

(It wont download because a simple zip file is not acceptable.  CRAZY ZRAZY RACYZ!!!)

change .zip to .txt, then upload

or is that broke too

OK heres the try!  (the text is zip really!)

AAArrrrrggggghhhh!

Heres--MAYBEE-- the .car changed to .txt

What an out of date juvenile site! JEEEEEZ!

Got to be honest, the HDRI image is way better looking than the 3 point setup, IMHO. Of course, when the main object is very reflective, the difference will be more pronounced.

Hi

Have to agree with Patrick. There's no competition between HDRI and the 3 light setup. Especially for Poser skin. I was about to post an example of an HDRI Poser scene I set up in Cararra to demonstrate but for some reason Cararra no longer will open the file. It gets to 50% and hangs. This is twice this has happened with two different files in the past day. Looks like I have another issue to get around now :-(

Reflective objects need HDRI if they are to look real.

You need to turn the interpolation value up high to avoid those arifacts (mine was sitting at 20%). Shonner thanks for the suggestion.

As promised here is a wee HDRI image.

bwtr - do you think you could reproduce this using just 3 point lighting?

Maybee if the three lights were inside a circular dome or, as my softbox idea.

If you email me brimar@jbr.com.au I will send you the softbox car file to experiment with.

Actually, photographers use a complete box but, as no background reflections occur  in 3d my setup seems to work quite well.

Ps I will do an exercise to see how it goes with Vic. and post.

Good learning experience for me. Getting more comfortable using lights with each new exercise.

Quote - You need to turn the interpolation value up high to avoid those arifacts (mine was sitting at 20%). Shonner thanks for the suggestion.

This confused a lot of old Carrara users at first because Eovia has the values backward for the setting.  Setting it to 0% is the complete opposite of turning if off the way it is now.

I only use distant lights if I use any lights outdoors these days.  And I always use the background for my skylight whether it be HDRI or just a single color.  The camera is always pointed away from the sky in these instances.  Just the ground and object are being rendered.