I'm having a problem in Poser 6 with black areas showing up in renders when using light hair colors on some of the hair I use. I've tried many different rendering options in both firefly and p4 renders but it makes no difference. I added renderings of August hair and Shee kiira hair as examples.

Anyone know what could cause this? It's driving me nuts.

Looks like a lighting problem ... maybe turn off Cast Shadows and definitely Make Visible in Raytracing.  Render with Raytracing on.

Yeah, I tried having raytracing on in the render settings, cast shadows off and raytracing visible on the hair properties, and raytrace shadows selected on the shadow casting lights. Still does it :(
It's really weird... can't figure out what would cause this.

Thanks though.

What does it look like in Preview?

Is Ambient Occlusion on for the light or for the hair itself?

Does this happen with every MAT pose (e.g. load a default hair and render it, does this happen?)

In preview it looks fine... the dark areas only show up in the render. I don't have Ambient occlusion on... although i've tried it with it on as well. And it does show up on any mat color that is light enough for it to stand out including the default blonde color.

Try this, for each material setting on the hair, in the material room, disconnect the texture map from the Diffuse_Color node & connect to the Alternate_Diffuse node instead. Turn the Diffuse_Value to 0 & copy the original Diffuse colour to the Alternate_Diffuse colour.

There was a thread describing this fix at DAZ, I can't find it at present, but I had the info copied to a word file.

Woot! It worked like a charm.  :)

Thanks much!

I am troubled why this is happening with different hair, different mat settings etc.  Are you using the same lights between the two hair renders?  What is the common factor?  Start a scene from scratch, default lighting, and load a hair with default settings - do you have this issue?  If you do then there is something very wrong with your Poser install.  When did this start happening?

There's just a few different hair that this happens with, and with the exception of Shee Kiira, it's allways twisted hairstyles with curls and such. It seems as though the black areas are on the opposite side of the main surface (if that makes sense) thus why it mainly just shows up on twisted or curly hair. As far as i know it's allways done it... and it's not that it only happens on some of the mats... It's just that you can't tell it's showing up on black or really dark brown for example and different lights/scenes make no difference. Since i normally make more gothic type scenes my characters usually have black hair so it's just not usually a problem. It's also not my poser install because just to check i made a fresh poser install on my other harddrive and installed those hair styles just to check... if anything it might be a video card issue.

Anyways, using the tip Anniebel posted works fine so it's not that much extra work. I appreciate the response though.

Yeh I found it happens to me a lot with different light hairs as well, mostly I think it depends on the hair ? how it is made & what light you use with it. To be honest though, since I discovered the above fix, I haven't explored it further, just used the above.

*"Try this, for each material setting on the hair, in the material room, disconnect the texture map from the Diffuse_Color node & connect to the Alternate_Diffuse node instead. Turn the Diffuse_Value to 0 & copy the original Diffuse colour to the Alternate_Diffuse colour."
*Do any of you even realize what this does? Yes, it eliminates your lighting problems, but do you know why?

It's because you reprogrammed the shader to ignore lights. If you don't believe me try this: turn all your lights off and render. You're still going to see that hair texture.

The Diffuse_Color channel of the root node internally connects to a Diffuse lighting calculation. The Alternate_Diffuse channel does not. The purpose of the Alternate_Diffuse is to give you a place to plug in an alternate implementation of diffuse lighting, instead of the one built into the root node. Examples of alternate lighting models in nodes include Toon, Clay, and Velvet. Because each model handles interaction with lights (that's its purpose) the Alternate_Diffuse input does not modify the colors you connect there at all.

So if you connect your texture directly to Alternate_Diffuse, you are specifying the EXACT color that should show up in the render. In other words, you've killed the 3D part and now you're just doing a pattern fill.

If you've found that 3D lighting is too hard and you're happy with doing "advanced coloring book" illustrations, by all means - disconnect lighting models from ALL your shaders. You'll find Poser much easier to use then. :)

The correct solution would be to check "Normals_Forward" on all your shader nodes for the hair. This includes the root node, and any additional lighting nodes that may be there in more complex shaders.

The back side of a polygon used to be (in P5) handled the same as the front side. In P6 and P7 they are not, and you have to request explicitly that it be handled the old way. The old way is "Normals_Forward" - in other words, even if you're looking at the "back" of a polygon, pretend its the front and shade it the same.

Any materials designed on or for P5 don't even have that option because it was created later. As a result, materials need to be updated in order to behave the same.

Well what do you suggest then, because no amount of light changing improves the situation with this kind of hair, that I have found, & nothing else anyone has suggested has helped, except this method.

It is all very well to bag a "fix", but at least give an alternative suggestion if you do. Yes, some of us do find lighting hard and are trying to learn, but being condescending doesn't help!

Cross posted, thank you at least for suggesting a fix. I have tried that method before, but it doesn't always work.

"It doesn't always work" - does that mean it sometimes does work?

Anniebel, you have enough posts under your belt to indicate that you're an experienced forum participant. I can't believe you took personal offense, but since you did let me apologize.

But now you have to tolerate my reminding you that

• not everything you read in a forum is directed AT you

• some people are funny or at least try to be, but you don't think they are because the sound of their voice is not present in the posting - it is left up to you to imagine the tone with which it was given - or you don't think they're funny because they're personality is just wildly different from yours and that makes it impossible for you to understand where they're coming from because you'd NEVER say anything like what you're reading, even in gest.

• the fact that you never make such a gest does not turn the other person into a horrible person, but merely different from you which is not a crime

• without access to delivery tone, you can't tell the difference between condescending and friendly banter

• some people put a special mark :) or similar indicating to those who might choose the wrong interpretation of what they're reading to let them know "This sentence is a gest. In case you have trouble recognizing a gest, here is how you know this is a gest, and not an insult."

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) ;0 ;-)

I asked if it sometimes does work because there can be more than one problem.

I think I'd be able to help more if people would post more pictures and describe what was done differently in each one.

For example, if you were to show me a render of a problem area, closeup and nice and big so I can see it well, using only a single infinite lights with shadows off, shadows on, raytrace shadows, depthmapped shadows, high shadow map size, low shadow map size, then again with IBL with AO, without AO, and so on.

Actually if you did all that, you'd probably find out what the problem is without me.

Oh  and you should show the shader too. Lots of people tell me what they think it says. For example, at least 20 times, I've been told "all I did was connect the Reflect node the Reflection_Color and set Reflection_Value to one and I'm not getting reflections - its black" - then I find they set Diffuse_Value to 0 and also turned on Reflect_Kd_Mult - that is a complex formula for black but they don't realize it.

Hi, I have been looking for the forum and hope you can help...

I am having the same problem with the light colors of hair. I tried changing to the alternate diffuse color (same color as diffuse, white, and I did take the diffuse to 0 percent) this worked on part of it but for some reason part of the hair rendered white, and also it does look flat and cartoony. I tried using the normals forward, and I think it looks a little better, but it still has black underneath. I've read a couple other posts on this - made sure the Reflection_Lite_Mult was on. I also did the diffuse thing with the normals, but nothing is working. My question is if I have the other settings right. I tried putting the hair on visible in raytracing and turning off cast shadows (although it still creates shadow, so I don't understand this). Am I supposed to put a certain light on raytracing rather than depth shadow map? I tried turning them all to that and then it picked up some reddish brown and the back looked worse with the black. I also read about ambient occlusion - is that for materials or the lights? Seems no matter what I do in the materials settings the hair still looks dark in the little preview window there too. I included a render that was with the raytracing on the hair (not the lights since that was worse). It's better than before I changed the stuff, but there is still some black underneath, and a lot in the back.

This problem is single sided strips facing away from the camera.  The normals are the problem in poser 5 only.

Bagginsbill, the reason the "normals forward" solution doesn't work in all cases is because that option is not present in poser 5 ;) (as far as I know... because I include it in my mat poses and poser 5 ignores it.)

The normals forward is my recommended solution in poser 6 and 7 plus I recommend NOT to use poser 5.  The user may(must) tweak the material on their own if they choose to do use poser 5 unfortunately :)

Besides using the alternate channels, you could just place lights behind the model to ensure the backfaces are lit the same as the front faces.  Ie your lighting it limited either way.

Hope that helps :)

Quote - Lots of people tell me what they think it says. For example, at least 20 times, I've been told...

And this is why we need you. grin Seriously. I have a lot of trouble mentally translating the tech behind the various nodes, in part because they're not necessarily explained very well in the manual. (I think the explanation for all the various specular nodes is pretty much the same, but they don't bother to tell you which is best suited for what, or how they differ -- and they definitely differ.)

April is right. I haven't fired up Poser 5 in ages, but I just tried it. The P5 render (both Firefly and P4) looked like the one on the left. If you're trying to render curly transmapped single-sided polygon hair with Poser 5, forget it.

If you have turned on Normals_Forward, and you did it for every material zone, you should not get black unless you're looking at something where the Diffuse_Color actually is black, or the light is not reaching that polygon (due to shadows or a spot light not pointing at it.)

If you don't show me your light setup and your shader setup, I can't help you. I can only guess at which of the several thousand things you could do wrong, has actually been done wrong.

Get rid of your figure. Load only a single infinite light at 80%, directly from the front of the hair. Do not cast shadows. Make sure Normals_Forward is checked on all material zones. Make sure the render option for removing backfacing polygons is not checked. Render it. If you think it looks wrong, then post the render and your shader for the material zone that you think looks wrong.

Also, to be sure it isn't just a lighting issue, let's get the shader out of the equation. Disconnect all nodes from your shader and set the Diffuse_Color = WHITE, Diffuse_Value = .9, Specular_Value = 0, Normals_Forward = 1. Render that.

OK Rebooting my PC fixed the problem. In case you didn't see an image in my last post, refresh your page.

Quote - I am having the same problem with the light colors of hair. I tried changing to the alternate diffuse color (same color as diffuse, white, and I did take the diffuse to 0 percent) this worked on part of it but for some reason part of the hair rendered white, and also it does look flat and cartoony.

Make sure you do all of that for all parts of the hair listed in the drop down menu.

Also, try turning off "cast shadows" in the parameter dials properties for the hair.

I did all of that for Alice hair by Kozaburo and achieved this result for the blonde hair:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/contest/index.php?entry_id=25565

Ok, I will try what bagginsbill said and see what I get.  The diffuse color is white by the way.  One problem though, it won't let me change the mat pose without a figure in the scene, so it's not going to be the exact same hair color I wanted. I will try using it with the figure and then deleting the figure maybe that will work.

and Acadia, I did change all the parts for the normals. Cast shadows is turned off, and visible in raytracing is turned on (although I don't understand this because it still seems to be casting shadows).

Ok, I figured before I tried messing with the lights it would probably help more to render the different ways I had it set up so am posting those.  The first two - 1. is default, that means deafault lights, material settings, everything.  2. I changed only the material settings of all parts of the hair to normals forward.

For 3. I changed the hair properties to be visible in raytracing and turned off the cast shadows. For some reason it looks some better than my previous render with the head, I don't know if it is because there is nothing to cause shadows on or what, because the settings were exactly the same. I rendered it a 4th time to get an angle closer to the head.

I did notice two other problems though. The model itself seems kind of messed up on the inside, but I am guessing that probably won't show once the head is there (B). I also noticed at the bottom of the hair that sort of boxes around the end of the hair are rendering and I'm not sure why (C). I'm not sure what is causing these problems, but they are minor compared to the black. If I wanted just dark blonde with streaks it would be okay, but this is a light blonde texture. (A) marks the worst black spots. Also there are some reddish streaks, is that just from the default brownish colored light? And why does it look worse with the model under it when the settings are the same?

A. - black spots
B. - polygons look messed up
C. - boxes rendering

I will try it with one light now, but here is that for now.  All other settings are default.

I will test the rest when I can. At the moment I can't get Poser to run at all and have been getting help from e-frontier tech support so once I can get it to render again, I'll try the lights.

I think the C problems are texture filtering. Is this P7? Set Texture_Filtering = None on each of the Image Maps, especially the transparency maps.