hola folks what's shakin

i have a question for you all.  i have made a few buildings here and there, and i'm working on a new one now.  however, i get light leaking in through the edges or the seams where walls meet.   (don't even try using raytraced shadows they act like there is no wall at all.)  any advice on how to avoid this? 

thanks

Not easy to see whats wrong without a picture, but you can either model the whole structure (Floor, walls) in one mesh. Or you can let the different parts overlap a little and that way close the gaps. Depending on the complexity of the building, and how far you are in the modeling process, i find modeling the whole structure in one mesh to work best.

A couple of hints:  First, the latest SR of Poser 7 helps a lot.  See my example
in this thread:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2747108

If the walls are separate one-sided panels, be very sure they meet
precisely to begin with.   This sort of depends on how your modeler works.
You may even need to edit the OBJ file manually to be sure the vertices on
the left edge of Wall A have exactly the same X and Z values as the vertices
on the right edge of Wall B.

Another hint: In earlier versions of Poser, I noticed that separate walls would
sometimes show a crack if their parameters were visible; but when I made
their parameters hidden, the crack disappeared.  Apparently Poser does 
a little extra "thinking" when the parameters are available, and the "thinking"
makes it move the walls apart just a tad.  I don't think this still happens
in 6 and 7.

One more trick, if all else fails:  Do what a real carpenter would do.
Add a little molding or baseboard at the corners.

here's a lame example...i just threw this together working on the principal of it this is the wire mesh of a block with an interior modeled from one single object, the interior extruded inward

again this is with depth mapped shadows.  raytracing ignores the walls alltogether
also this had been shot mapped and unmapped in uvmapper...and also tried with exporting and welding verts and shooting again to no avail

Can you try to take some screen shot with no light source and as a shaded wire frame object (F3 and F4) I think its your model that there might be something wrong with, and without being 100% sure, but it might be the normals that you have gotten turned around, as the mesh doesnt seem to receive any light in the last image, or did you move the light?.

this may be one of the farily well-known FFRender bugs in regard to rear lighting.
try the same scene in a more advanced rendering engine.

What i meant with modeling the structure as one, is to kinda make a floor plane. Maybe you will find that easier.

But what you do is simply start with a plane, where you extrude the edges to form the basic layout of the house, in this case i have colored the walls, and the main door to the house. Which is simply to make it easier for myself to see what it looks like, and you just use the slice plane or cut tool which ever you find the easiest. and simply "draw" in the walls and door openings.

After that you can select the walls and extrude them to the right height, and then once more to create the rest of wall above the doors. Then you have a basic layout, and then you can cut windows the same way, add a roof etc. And then you can start adding all the details you want.

that's a nice technique mob i'm gonna go with that the next one.  in the one i am really working on i did pretty much like that but by the room instead of an entire house, outlining as many edges as a figured i needed and then deleting polys to open window and doors.

in the last image, there is only one spotlight, casting depth mapped shadow, directed at the back of the "building".   most of it is drenched in shadow as it should be but you can see a little light peeping through the building against the door edge and the plane of the floor as it meets the back wall, almost as if there  is a window back there.  the normals are all consistent.  here's the object itself if you'd like to mess with it.

Max2Obj Version 4.0 Mar 10th, 2001

object Box01 to come ...

v  -5.85239744 0.00000000 -31.45387459
v  -5.21771097 0.00000000 -31.45387459
v  -5.85239744 0.00000000 -32.01475906
v  -5.21771097 0.00000000 -32.01475906
v  -5.85239744 0.40590402 -31.45387459
v  -5.21771097 0.40590402 -31.45387459
v  -5.85239744 0.40590402 -32.01475906
v  -5.21771097 0.40590402 -32.01475906
v  -5.62098551 0.03792048 -31.45337486
v  -5.44912291 0.03792048 -31.45337486
v  -5.62098551 0.36798355 -31.45337486
v  -5.44912291 0.36798355 -31.45337486
v  -5.62098551 0.03792048 -31.48537445
v  -5.44912291 0.03792048 -31.48537445
v  -5.62098551 0.36798355 -31.48537445
v  -5.44912291 0.36798355 -31.48537445
v  -5.82178831 0.02561369 -31.49237442
v  -5.24832010 0.02561369 -31.49237442
v  -5.82178831 0.38029024 -31.49237442
v  -5.24832010 0.38029024 -31.49237442
v  -5.82178831 0.02561374 -31.96637535
v  -5.24832010 0.02561374 -31.96637535
v  -5.82178831 0.38029030 -31.96637535
v  -5.24832010 0.38029030 -31.96637535

24 vertices

g Box01
f 4 2 1 3
f 8 7 5 6
f 24 23 21 22
f 8 6 2 4
f 7 8 4 3
f 5 7 3 1
f 10 9 1 2
f 11 12 6 5
f 12 10 2 6
f 9 11 5 1
f 14 13 9 10
f 16 14 10 12
f 15 16 12 11
f 13 15 11 9
f 18 17 13 14
f 20 18 14 16
f 19 20 16 15
f 17 19 15 13
f 22 21 17 18
f 24 22 18 20
f 23 24 20 19
f 21 23 19 17

22 faces

g

gracias

again i made this sample building with as few edges as possible just to check what is happening

You can try turning the lights "Shadow Minimum Bias" way down to 0.01 and increase its mapsize up to 4096. This will stop time as we know it but close some of the leaks.

Try tuning your Light's shadowcam  also. Get it to just cover your structure.

Poser does leak light.

I loaded dork's obj above and looked at it through my shadow cams. I have 3 lights, IBL, Main (infinite), and Rim (infinite). The Rim light is the 3rd light. Looking through the main light shadow cam everything looks fine. Looking through the Rim light shadow cam, the little room has "hither" clipping going on, unless I change it to a spotlight. The Main light does not have this problem.

I restarted Poser and loaded James. He, too, is hither clipped when looking at him with my 3rd light shadow cam.

It's like the 3rd light, when set to infinite, is very close to the center of the scene, and I can't adjust hither low enough to fix it. Based on the perspective, the camera is not actually that close.

Anybody else seeing this? I'm using Poser Pro here.

If you're getting this hither clipping going on, then the surfaces cannot cast shadows.

mybookmark

I'm posting to bookmark, but to add that I've been trying to make hi-re planes and single sideded planes (no matter from which side lighted) block spotlights and am puzzled by light going right thru things in many cases. PoserPro with all patches.

::::: Opera :::::

OK,  I've come across this and I think I know the solution.  I believe it is a rounding error within Poser as it tries to round off the co-ordinates of any ".obj" file that uses more than 6 digits per axis.  Your example has 10 digits to represent each co-ordinate and that will cause Poser to create errors as it rounds them down to 6 digits.

For a solution (or test) download a modelling program called Silo2, load your model into it, then save out as an obj file.  Silo2 will correctly round down the co-odinate numbers and hopefully the lighing issue will be solved within Poser.

Silo2 is free to use for 30 days, then after which can be used as a file converter.

check it out  http://www.nevercenter.com/

( I found this out while using Wing3d which operates at an 8 digit resolution)

good luck
jdc

Meanwhile, this is with ray-traced shadows. I also tested with depth-mapped shadows. Shadows are being cast just fine in all directions. Here the light is from the front, but it works from behind too.

What isn't working right is how much light is being reflected on the various parts. I'm seeing gradients where there should be none. (on the floor and the bottom of the doorway)

(Click the image to enlarge).

One workaround that helps sometimes with this problem is to check the box at the bottom under the advanced materials tab for "Normals Forward" in the Materials Room.    Last render I did had the identical problem, until I hit the "Normals Forward" box. I have NO idea why it worked, though I know why it doesn't work all the time. :laugh:  So much to keep track of!

I think jdcooke is right. The fact that you modelled the prop over 200 feet away from the origin of the universe is giving round-off errors. You need to model the object near the origin, so that all the numerical precision is available to capture the exact position of each vertex. With the entire object hundreds of feet from the origin, most of the bits are being used to represent the absolute location in world space.

Quote - One workaround that helps sometimes with this problem is to check the box at the bottom under the advanced materials tab for "Normals Forward" in the Materials Room.    Last render I did had the identical problem, until I hit the "Normals Forward" box. I have NO idea why it worked, though I know why it doesn't work all the time. :laugh:  So much to keep track of!

I have normals forward. They are not reversed, they are twisted, but still towards the camera.

No light is leaking. This is with ray-traced infinite light.

Given you said this:

*don't even try using raytraced shadows they act like there is no wall at all.

*I'm troubled by the fact that raytraced shadows work fine for me.

Did you, perhaps, forget to enable raytracing? Raytraced shadows are not generated without raytracing. This is a common mistake people make. You have to enable shadows and enable raytracing in render settings, or you get no raytraced shadows.

ah yes that is correct i did not enable raytracing (sorry for the newbie mistake) i will hit it again
i'm going to round the digits to 6  also and check that.  man those are nice renders.
gracias

thanks for everything folks

I did this test in Poser7 as I've not really thought about it since Poser6. Used the same light and settings less the  minimum bias and mapsize dials for the 2 shadowmap tests.

Top row ir RayTrace. Some lacrimal showing. Even on dark side. (not optimal settings)
2nd is Shadowmap with same settings. In heaps of trouble..
3rd is shadowmap dialed to 0.01bias, 1024map. Much better
Last is through the shadowcam

One more though,,,

acch,, camshot got whacked

hmmmm

richardson, that last image....all raytrace lights?

just one?

In render setting what are your pixel samples and min setting? How many raytrace bounces and what is your irradiance cachings?

I have been fascinated by raytrace soft shadows for the past week in Poser. This looks good.

:::: Opera :::::

I just did this to see how far Poser has come since P5.. You can up the blur and raise bias to smooth out the shadows. Lower shadow to 0.5-0.7...etc in Ray Trace. Mix it with a clone Shadowmap light and split the shadows from 1.00.(example).. Options are endless

yes, my tests are favorable on RT too. Will post renders later today. Thanks for posting your settings.

This should be pretty fast render. Notice he's got raytrace checked, but no bounces.

I wonder if this approach would cut down on flicker in animation, which is a well-known plague in Poser with shadowmap.

::::: Opera ::::::

good luck
jdc

Oh,  and a correction,  I said 6 digit,  when i should have said 6 decimal places.  

later
jdc
 

Actually, six significant digits is correct. The number .00000654321 can be represented without roundoff, but .10000654321 cannot.

Poser seems to be using 32-bit floats instead of 64-bit floats. I have tested this in shader math and it's definately 32-bit. I have to work around that sometimes.

Well,  the math is beyond me.

However,  I may have spoken too soon.  After doing some more tests, I'm finding it difficult to recreate some of the errors I was getting just a few months ago, so I'm gonna make a wild guess and assume that SR 3 might have solved some rendering issues.  Hmmmm, the things that go on  when you look away for a short time.  :)

oh well,  take care
jdc

Hmmmm, the things that go on  when you look away for a short time.....

yes, poser has become quite nice.

o man
did you come up with the correct crease angle by trial and error?
that does seem to make a huge difference

Yup,  25.00 is just a number I threw at it.   Sometimes you just have to experiment with each prop until you get the look you want.

take care
Joe

This is one point light in front of her face. Notice from the settings no AO in the light, but there is AO in the shader tree for her skin. Blackeyes by blackhearted.

I love these raytrace shadows. This scene could use a kickup int he bump.

::::: Opera :::::

O.O I had the "Bleeding light" on my "room cover" I made with primitive. it has been driving me crazy. (yes I did the normals forward after I posted about black artifacts on the walls)
O.o though I am keen on the soft shadows with raytracing. all I get are shadows with speckly edges.
I can work fine with regular lights..but anything with raytracing ....

can you post an image of those spekly edge shadows and your settings?

operaguy,

The eyes look interesting. Were they a pita to switch out? I bought them years ago but never tried them. V4 eyes are so tightly fit,,, I'd pass on V3's bad rotation problems. Does it open up in the eyesocket when you turn 33 degrees or so? Do like the deep geometry of them (irises).

They were easy to place. I just went into the Heirarchy and made LEye and REye invisible. Then, load in the two BlackEyes from their prop library spots. Spin up the "Y" and they approach correct placement, go in close and tweak x/y/z.. In order to get the corners to work well I had to scale just a slight bit.

There is a follow-on set by BlackHearted called "actual eyes" which I also have. I did not even get to that, as the straight-forward BlackEyes looked so good.

::::: Opera :::::