Fascinating. Thanks for the renders, Dan. Your Apollo has the same "necklace" that ice-boy showed us. Looks like P7 and PPro are very similar, so it's probably not a unique problem to Poser Pro.

ice-boy - This looks like a bug. The necklace is impossible to be from shadow map resolution - it is well within the area that is in deep shadow - it's not marginal at all.

I do think that GC reveals the problem much more strongly, but I suspect it has been there all along.

My "Riddick" render has lighting similar to this, although there was IBL involved as well, and no GC. Have a look:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1470441

Back then (June 2007) I think I was only using DM shadows at the time. My Riddick shows some "necklace" lighting effect. He has bulging neck muscles, though, so we'd expect some variation in diffuse reflection there. But perhaps not that much? I'm willing to believe that was showing the problem - it may be that if I'd only used the spotlight in that render, I would have noticed a big issue.

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