Insofar as the first, I'm not at my home computer, but look and see if the plane is set to "receive" shadows (if that function exists; I'm starting to confuse my 3d programs these days). If it's set to receive them, turn it off and see if that makes any difference.

no such option i'm afraid..& it is receiving shadow,just not where the transparent object is in the way :

I know I have had that issue before but I think I just switched to depth mapped shadows ...

Perhaps raising raytracebounces may help?

Yea, I was wondering if that wasn't the case too. I think initial setting on raytrace bounces is pretty low in Poser. Mine is cranked up to 8 for fine renderings. (no particular reason I chose 8, except to see what happens.)

When in firefly settings, hover over the raytrace bounces. It gives couple hints in the status bar. I just noticed those in P7. (See pic)

Quote - does anyone have a fix for this?

Would be nice if there was, this bug has been around since P5

Whoah! How long are your render times Connie? I think 3 or 4 bounces should be sufficient unless your doing really crazy things with glasses & mirrors, LOL!!

Quote - Would be nice if there was, this bug has been around since P5

Fixed in Poser 7 SR2.

Quote - > Quote - Would be nice if there was, this bug has been around since P5

Fixed in Poser 7 SR2.

Woot :thumbupboth:

Quote - > Quote - Would be nice if there was, this bug has been around since P5

Fixed in Poser 7 SR2.

thanks guys..back to the drawing board :

So no work arounds for this Poser 6 render bug? Nice. _;;

AO is set on the character skin and on the cloth.
The strap and the cloth are separate material channels.

On the left pic, no transmap, only plain cloth. The AO is visible on the skin.

On the right, a transmap is applied on the cloth material (not on the strap). The AO is visible on the skin ONLY under the strap, NOT under the cloth.

Is it a known issue with AO?

I don't know what the programmers of Poser tried to do, but I know what it does.

As soon as you connect ANYTHING to the transparency channel, the object becomes invisible for AO.

The blue box has AO in the material.

In front of it are two squares. The red one has no transparency on it. The white one has transparency connected to a white node - meaning it is 100% opaque, same as the red one.

But it creates no AO effect on the blue box.

Here I have Transparency set to .000001 - 99.9999% opaque - and there is no AO.

BagginsBill, what version of Poser?  Are you saying this happens with P7's latest SR?  Have you tried this with Poser Pro?

Just curious.  I'm thinking of picking up PP.

This is a limitation of how AO works and it's the same in every other renderer. Some renderers treat all objects as 'opaque' for AO, no matter what the transparency, others treat objects with even a hint of tranparency as 'invisible'. Firefly happens to do the latter. There's no way around this as AO is calculated purely by 'touching' objects around each pixel and not calling their shaders.

To get degrees of transparency, what is needed is an advanced version of AO, called Final Gathering that Firefly doesn't support (and is a lot slower then AO besides)

Oh my! So there is no workaround to avoid that so :(
I guess i will avoid transparencies so... ^^

Ghonma: It is a limitation of Poser as it is now, but why on earth would you say it's the same in every other renderer? Because it certainly is NOT the same in Kerkythea, WHICH IS FREE, so you can try it and see.

*There's no way around this as AO is calculated purely by 'touching' objects around each pixel and not calling their shaders.

*There most certainly is a way around it - you just said it - AO should involve the shader transparency channel if it is in use. This is a pretty simple thing to do, and it is exactly what is done by the ray-tracing directional shadow generator. There's no reason why the AO shadow generator cannot send its ray out and query the shader at the intersection point.

Look at what a beautiful, incredible job PPro did with this transmapped square. There are points that are 95% transparent, 50% transparent, and 0% transparent. Click for full size and observe the lovely distance-based blurring and the half-dark shadow from the little rectangles.

The shadow is raytraced with blur, not depth-mapped. Clearly the raytraced shadow uses the transparency information perfectly. There is no excuse why the AO shadow algorithm should not do the same.

I've filed a bug with SM on this.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=1331547

Mazak

No problem for raytraced shadows. It renders fast, too.

Quote - There most certainly is a way around it - you just said it - AO should involve the shader transparency channel if it is in use. This is a pretty simple thing to do, and it is exactly what is done by the ray-tracing directional shadow generator. There's no reason why the AO shadow generator cannot send its ray out and query the shader at the intersection point.

You misunderstood, all i'm saying is that it's not a 'bug' but rather a limitation of Firefly. SM can of course add new code to give us this feature, in which case it would no longer be 'Ambient Occlusion' but rather 'Shaded Occlusion' (or Final Gathering as other renderers call it) Which is vastly superior then AO, but comes at a significant performance loss in REYES. Not that i would mind if they added it of course as it can be used for all sorts of neat tricks, including multi bounce IBL and color bleeding to name just 2.

Also note that kerkythea does Final Gathering by default (as you can see in it's render options) It can also do path tracing, which gives you physically correct occlusion. Neither of these options are available in firefly, till SM actually go and add them in the code.

EDIT: See here

Quote - Whoah! How long are your render times Connie? I think 3 or 4 bounces should be sufficient unless your doing really crazy things with glasses & mirrors, LOL!!

I tend to render that kind of final stuff overnight, so I never know how long it really takes. I'm not into fast renders.
But also, I'm not that crazy about poser renderer in general. I render in it when I sort of have to. I often escape to Cararra for renders... and right now I'm on a path to get better with Vray... getting more serious with updating my arch viz portfolio.

I can appreciate that I didn't know of industry standards around the term Ambient Occlusion, and that I misunderstood what you were getting at. However, I'd say then you were arguing what the AO term "means" and that we should be asking for something different by name, rather than suggesting that Poser AO should have this capability added.

Nevertheless, I'm not sure you're right about this terminology business.

This is a Kerkythea render. I chose the render option called "Ambient Occlusion". It is preset #23. It is not photon mapping, or final gather, or any of those other things. It is called Ambient Occlusion, and as you can see, it does exactly what we want it to do. And it was blindingly fast.

I've had that issue forever when I use Transmapped hair.

From the Kerkythea manual - maybe they made this up. :)

Ambient Occlusion (AO) is a ratio of how much ambient light a surface point would be likely to receive. It simulates a huge dome light surrounding the entire scene. If a surface point is under a foot or table, it will end up much darker than the top of someone's head or the tabletop.

It doesn't qualify this as "limited to solid polygons - transmaps will be ignored."

This sure sounds like Poser's IBL+AO

Fair enough... kerkythea is a newer, Maxwell style renderer, so it's quite possible they are doing something with AO i don't understand properly. I also seem to recall some paper by pixar where they were working on fast AO by using point clouds. Perhaps this is an example of that tech ?

In any case I still think it's not gonna be so easy in firefly. Wouldn't mind being proven wrong of course as it is a PITA issue.

Hmm i took a closer look at the settings file for that 23. Ambient Occlusion option. And guess what, it is indeed using Final Gathering. Can be found at:

Kerkythea Rendering SystemRenderSettings23. Ambient Occlusion.xml

Look at line 25, 50-54 etc where it's setting FG rays to 800 and 900 and so on. It also disables it for part of the raytrace (line 37) which is why i guess it's so fast.

My guess is that kerky only has FG and no real AO. But it does it so efficiently that it doesn't even need AO at all. Very cool stuff IMO and i'm liking this renderer more and more.

Oh that's cool. Thanks for explaining it. I'm not familiar with the program yet - had no clue what 23 was really doing.

I did one experiment that led me to believe it was more than IBL+AO. I placed an emitting square nearby. It lit the other objects. That ain't IBL :)

Dammit someone convince SM to throw some cash towards these guys to do a poser plugin.

This baby is fast, stable and has features up the wazoo. And the fact it requires so little setup is perfect for us poser guys with short attention spans :P

Hay guys, could either of you give me a quick comparison of Kerkythea vs. Vray?

I'm about to spend time getting more in depth with Vray, and wondering if it wouldn't be worth while getting familiar with kerkythea first.. or instead, or both?
This is with exterior arch viz in mind.

Well I can't compare them - having never used V-Ray. V-Ray is a plugin for Maya? Not sure - but seems there is a downloadable demo (crippled) for Maya.

All I know is the Kerky gallery is impressive. But the few photos shown on the V-Ray home page are stunningly perfectly photo-real.

Kerky is free. No reason not to try it. Well, I suppose there's your time wastage. :)

Kerky also has several of their own Bagginsbills who give out awesome shaders and light sets and tons of advice for free.

Quote - Dammit someone convince SM to throw some cash towards these guys to do a poser plugin.

This baby is fast, stable and has features up the wazoo. And the fact it requires so little setup is perfect for us poser guys with short attention spans :P

Kerky is far and away a superior renderer versus Firefly. SM should OEM the renderer and material system, integrate it, and be done.

Now THAT is a $200 upgrade that would be worth the money.

Quote - > Quote - Dammit someone convince SM to throw some cash towards these guys to do a poser plugin.

This baby is fast, stable and has features up the wazoo. And the fact it requires so little setup is perfect for us poser guys with short attention spans :P

Kerky is far and away a superior renderer versus Firefly. SM should OEM the renderer and material system, integrate it, and be done.

Now THAT is a $200 upgrade that would be worth the money.

Damn skippY!

Connie..for arch viz you cant go wrong with Vray..I think more than half the arch viz industry is using it
I found it very easy to you use with bucketloads of options which(like mental ray) you'd have to be a baggins to get your head around ;)
final render is also worth looking into..I find the ease of use alongside all the advanced things it can do is great...both are incredibly fast render engines too

using vray,final render & even mental ray I've never noticed any weird stuff while using transparency alongside ambient occlusion..everything renders as expected

I've never used Kerky but agree it would be cool to have something more advanced on offer

Thanks Bagginsbill :)

Vray is a third party renderer for a few "big aps" one of them being Max. It appears to be all the rage in architectural visualizations (Among other things).

I'm updating my arch viz portfolio, which is 8 or so years old, all Max, but pre Vray or Mental Ray Pre - meaning before I had those renderers - I don't remember when they actually came out.

Anyway, sort of examining my options....BTW, I've had Vray for a little while, sitting on the shelf. I've been upgrading the software, but not using it while I was working elsewhere. Sounds like I should just get on with it and use it.

Quote - Connie..for arch viz you cant go wrong with Vray..I think more than half the arch viz industry is using it
I found it very easy to you use with bucketloads of options which(like mental ray) you'd have to be a baggins to get your head around ;)
final render is also worth looking into..I find the ease of use alongside all the advanced things it can do is great...both are incredibly fast render engines too

using vray,final render & even mental ray I've never noticed any weird stuff while using transparency alongside ambient occlusion..everything renders as expected

I've never used Kerky but agree it would be cool to have something more advanced on offer

Thanks Stefan :)
Yeah, after asking the question... I'm sort of wondering why I even asked it. I do need to bite the bullet on Vray, and get up to speed with updating my portfolio. Especially now that I managed to get my foot in the door with couple of builders with my crappy 8-year old demo reel. It even has couple of bryce renders that they like :lol:

Of course, if Kerkythea has redeeming qualities I should know about - doesn't hurt to ask :)  I do keep hearing about it more and more.

I know several who is whom in the local competition, and I know they all use Mental Ray, 3D max and Combustion in their workflow. I don't have Combustion yet. Need to look and see what the benefits are.

Since I've been laid off, I decided to try and resurrect my little Arch Viz business I had few years ago. I have couple months or so to get up to speed on the latest 'look' and make a new demo reel.

Anyway ... sorry about the thinking out loud and self-pep-talk digression here....

Spaeking of which, once I have things updated I'll probably post a few on CG society for a serious critique
gulp sweating bullets
oki...
I better not even think about that till after I hit 'post' over there, or I'll talk myself out of doing it.

[Kitty, shut up already!]

Quote - Dammit someone convince SM to throw some cash towards these guys to do a poser plugin.

I can't control SM's expense account, but if anyone's interested in writing a Kerkythea exporter for Poser I'd be happy help out.

I would like to try that, as I have already stated in the Kerkythea thread. Seems as if some people are interested, so I will give it a try.

I ran into this transparency/AO problem as well.
The weird thing is that it appears to be related to the size of the transparent object. For example, AO worked fine on a character with transmapped eyelashes, but as soon as I threw a tree with transmapped leaves into the scene, AO was gone.
Disabling "visible in raytracing" does not help. I'll probably have to hide the tree, render with AO, unhide the tree, render again, and composit in Photoshop. Grr.

By the way,strand based hair is not treated as being transparent - AO works great when using strand based hair.

A Poser export to Kerkythea would be dynamite!  Literally!  Something like that would be long overdue. I would be VERY enthusiatic about beta testing it!

I assume you're showing AO on the second one?

Hard for some to see. Render with white color, not hair color. Just transmap, white, and AO.