I create a cylinder mesh in Carrara 7, import it into Poser 7, render using Firefly it and it shows up black and casting rectangular shadows.  This is with the default lighting and no fancy render settings.

If I turn off Cast Shdows, it renders OK.  If I render using Poser 4 it renders correctly with shadows.  And oddly enough if I import another of the same object and render with Cast Shadows on, it renders just fine.  It happens when there is a single object. 

Has anyone run into this before?

Thanks

The flat black appearance is a definite indicator of reversed normals.
Use the Grouping tool to invert the normals, and it should then behave better.

I don't know if it is related but the "Remove back faces" option in Firefly might have an effect as well.

Ockham...  No luck.  I tried both importing with flip normals on, flipping the normals in the group editor, and stripping the normals out of the OBJ file.  Same result.

Also the example with the 2 cylinders is exactly the same as the first which rendered black except for having two of the same object.

There seems to be something about the single object mesh that I exported from Carrara that is puzzling Firefly.  I've stripped the meshes down to the basics and still get this result.  The only difference I'm seeing is the scaling between the two programs, and I've tried scaling it down before exporting and scaling on importing all with the same result.

Any other ideas?

Thanks!!

LukeA...  Nope.  Remove backfacing polys didn't do it.

I'm going to pull it into UV Mapper and check it out to see if there is anything wierd. 

Thanks.

One light seems to pick up the color and casts a proper shadow and the other is going black and casts a square shadow.

I'm confused!!

I'm not seeing that square artiifact when exporting sphere.obj from carrara assembly room to poser.  2 things to check:

• some users have reported difficulties or bugs with the last C7Pro update
• there may be a difference between inserting a sphere in assembly room and exporting (my method) and generating a sphere in vertex room with subdivision smoothing

Miss Nancy...  I just tried your method using only the Assembly room (not taking it into the vertex model room) and have the same result.  Comparing the 2 object files, the one straight from the Assembly room seems to have some jusnk in it and the one from the model room seems cleaner.

I bought Carrara 7 Pro in early March.  I check with DAZ to see if I'm missing an update or have one that has problems.

Other than the scaling , the only other big difference between Carrara and Poser is that you have convert the z-axis in Carrara to y-axiz in Poser.  But the meshes look fine.  ???

Thanks for your help.

One more note...

The problem occurs in Depth Map Shading,  When I change a light to Ray Trace that shadow is fine.

Sounds to me like the good old fashioned scaling bug if it works ok with 2 objects but not with one.  Try scaling the thing up a bit bigger - Poser has problems sometimes with depth mapped shadows and small things

Miss Nancy...  What version of Carrara are you using?  7 Pro?

Thanks again both of you.

FrankT...    I scaled it up even more and everything cleared up.  Yeah, it's a scaling issue.

The render above is off because I forgot to clear the saved depth map.

I tested some more and an object alone that is smaller than around 8.5 inches, about 12% of Std Fig, in size has trouble with depth maps.  Ray tracing works fine on the small objects though.

Thanks Frank.

And thanks everyone for your help.

it's a poser feature unrelated to carrara.  same result when trying to render poser "ball hi-res" (scaled to 33% or smaller) and one inf-lite w/depth map shad.

Miss Nancy...

I was testing objects from Poser and another program also, but they were just a little bit bigger so they worked and absolutely confused me...  Just a couple of inches.   If I had made them the same size I might have caught on sooner but I figure the difference between 7 and 10 inches wasn't going to matter.  Hah!  I'll know better in the future.

I'm glad it has nothing to do with Carrara.  There are certain models I love building in it.

Thanks again.

would yo be able to send me the object thats creating the problem. 

If its a scale issue with one shadowcam being zoomed way out it should be obvious in Poser. The artifact is one pixel in the shadow map.

email marks542004@yahoo.com

Maybe the problem is with the shadow mapping settings in Poser, sice the obvect renders fine when raytraced. 
If the problem is with the obj istelf, I would expect it wouldn't render fine when raytraced.

I'm not sure this is bug or specfication of Poser,
but Poser can not make correct shadow map when the object is small.

The work around we found are
(1) Use raytraced shadow
or
(2) Load more bigger object in the scene (or more objects outside the camera)
or
(3) do not cast shadow

Caution: following link is japanese.
http://www.forum3d.net/bbs/index.php?topic=835.0

Thanks for your responses.

I've got a confirmation from Smith Micro that Firefly does not handle depth maps on small objects.  If you put two small objects in the scene, unless they are very close, then it works.  It seems to be the target area that Firefly tries to map that matters.  Two objects makes the map area larger.

In the default light set up the threshold seems to be about 8 1/2 inches.  And this is with Infinite Lights.  Change to Spots and the object renders fine.  I haven't tried to move the spots way out to see if distance is a factor.

You can test this by using Poser primitives like the Hi-Res Ball.  It loads at about 10 inches so if you scale it down to 60% you wind up with bad shadow map.  Scale it back up to 100% and it renders fine.  Also, use two spheres, scale them way down, 10-20%, put them close together and the shadow map is bad.  Move them apart far enough and they render OK.

For practical purposes, it really doesn't matter much.  How often does anyone want a render of one small object?  I was just making a temp thumbnail for a prop for my library when I stumbled across this limitation and panicked.  Now that I know it isn't my mesh that's the problem I'll just work around it.

Thanks again everyone.

poser may be able to use depth map shadows on an isolated small object (a very small scene), but it's tricky.  the black square corresponds to the shadowmap of the depth-mapped infinite lite.  thus the black square can be scaled and/or moved by switching to the pertinent shadowcam, allowing the small object to be illuminated by scaling down and moving the shadowmap.  to get the depth-mapped shadow, it may be necessary to edit the pz3 file for the shadow blur radius, which, if fixed at >= 1.0, is larger than the object's shadow. 

however, if anybody was wondering whether depth-mapped shadows are better than ray-traced shadows, in versions of poser prior to 8, there is at least one instance in which the ray-traced shadow is required.

Miss Nancy...

Ahhh....  The Blur Radius as a factor.  That makes sense.  I'll have to try that.

Thanks.