I've just installed the Poser 7 SP2 in an effort to fix a problem of artifacts appearing in renders. But it's made no difference (shot in the dark, anyway). I have a dual-core Athlon pc so in P7 I set the Render Threads to 2. I definitely see an increase in render speed as a result, which is why I prefer this configuration. However, render artifacts often appear. And after tweaking every possible setting to get rid of these artifacts, including experimenting with every option in Render Settings, lighting, and even tweaking the meshes in the scene itself, with no success, I have come to this conclusion: the artifacts are a direct result of a conflict between certain dual-core configurations, and the Firefly render engine. Why do I say that? Because only when I set Render Threads to 1 do they seem to go away. And if I set it to 3 or 4 threads, it seems to INCREASE the amount of artifacts. I have found nothing else gets rid of artifacts other than reducing the Render Threads to 1. However,  even setting it to 1 still produces artifacts occasionally. It's so bloody random!

In addition, I've found some things do not seem to affect whether artifacts will appear or not: 1)the size and complexity of the scene; 2)if the scene consists of just  one type of poly, or a combination of one-sided, double-sided polys; tris or quads; 3)the use of Ambient Occlusion, and IBLs, HRDIs; 4)the position of the camera ; 5)the number and type of lights...

Anyone else corroborate my findings? Is this an old P7 problem? Or is there a tweak, workaround, I've missed? I'd really prefer to use 2 render threads and this is so bloody annoying. :/

What kind of artifacts?  Are you set to internal renderer, or external?  Have you tried changing bucket size (up or down)?  I remember that bucket size sometimes causes a problem like this. 

The artifacts are often elongated blocks, or sometimes just thick or thin, horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines, or sometimes square spots anywhere in the image.  I've tried bucket sizes of 32, 48 and 64 and everything in between and it doesn't seem to make them go away. I've also tried setting the Render Threads to separate process.

What bucket size do you suggest?

The only cure I've found is to hide everything behind the camera,
so that the camera has a perfectly clear 'horizon' except for the
narrow area you're actually looking at.

Sometimes a different camera position will help, but generally
the artifacts are a psychedelic alteration of something behind the camera.

please post a picture , sometimes those are a result of poor geometry (poser seems to hate long thin triangles)  and can be fixed by unwelding some of the vertices. If its a commercial product thats less likely .

It could be either double sided polygons, or more likely too low a value for the Shadow Bias.
A screenshot would help in determining which.

I've run into that exact problem as well (gray blocks appearing in the render with multiple threads)...it seems to be a bug with P7's render engine as it has done it to me on multiple configurations. The only correlation I can find is it does seem to be a problem with the geometry of some scene objects and light combinations. I would like to know what's up with that as well if anyone finds out anything.

I'm not sure whether I've seen this one or not, although it sounds like something I've run into.  Can anyone post a sample image showing the effect?

Hi all,

I agree with bluecity, I've experienced that as well and it only seems to happen when I have objects in a scene that I modeled in external modeling program.  I had one render that was giving me fits with odd triangle-shaped gray patterns appearing seemingly for no reason, ie. there was nothing close to or behind the camera, the scene was very simple with only a few objects and one mill figure, but three of the objects were modeled, one by another modeler and two by meself...

Since I am new to all of this 3D stuff, I'm sure there were polygon problems with my models which I modeled in 3ds, and only after hours of fumbling around with poser (I'm pretty new to poser as well) was I able to get the gray triangle patterns to go away.  What eventually worked was deleting the lights several times and loading a new light set, tweaking the shadow settings, and then finally it went away.

But I have to say that as complicated as the 3D apps are, it's a wonder they work at all, and if they work 95% of the time without problems, I can live with the other 5%.

I'm just going to have to learn more about modeling, and that takes a lot of time and experimentation, but that's what is fun about it, at least for me...

*(I'm using poser 7 with no service paks, and have had very few problems with it, almost none, which to me is amazing. It has been a pretty solid program right out of the box.  Sure it has crashed on me numerous times, but that is usually because I did something stupid and deserved the crash. At first I hated the program, stuck it back in the box, put it on a shelf and thought I might give it away.  Then one day I was bored and decided to give it another try, and now really glad I did.  The gallery is now haunted by my inept poser renders, there is no stopping me now!!!  lol  ;-)

M

I get odd artifacts when using ray-tracing.  Usually they are a leaf-shaped shadow.  They can be gotten rid of by increasing the bias setting of the lights.

I have seen this too - it is like that part of the image just isn't rendered. Very annoying to have a grey block in the middle of someones head!  I have moved the camera position slightly and re-rendered, which can solve the problem, but sometimes at the expense of the composition you really wanted.

If I still can't get it to render an important part of my image, I save the original "faulty" render and then use the area render tool to select and render only the area of the image where the problem is occuring - mostly (not every, but certainly most times) this area will render quite happily. Save that and then I bring both images into PSP or similar as separate layers and then merge them.

Bit fiddly, but with a little practice, no one will ever know!