Anyone know what is actually being shown behind the red dots when the IDL precalculation pass is going on?

Whichway

I remember someone saying in another thread that it may be Poser fleshing out irradiance ;o). Don't know if that's true, but that's what's been said.

Laurie

Hey! **piz99**, if you wander by, did you notice that the Render FireFly script allows you not only to set the raytrace and IDL bounces independently, but also allows you to render using *only* the IDL? This looks like a very clear way to locate where the splotches will appear and maybe get some feel for what is going on. From my one example so far, I would guess the splotches are minimized if there is a fair amount of direct light competing with the indirect light around the splotchy areas. More research!

Whichway

P.S. - You can time your renders as well!
P.P.S. - I have no idea why it failed to render the second block. It's transparent, not white.

[Before you ask, it's part of the Poser 8 content at - C:Program FilesSmith MicroPoser 8RuntimePythonposerScriptsScriptsMenuPartnersDimension3DRender FireFly.py]

Here are the settings and full render of the above set. The IDL splotches on his right knee are hidden by the direct light there; I don't know what is going wrong with the blocky background.

31:30 to render.

Whichway

Well f***. This blasted forum won't let me attach the pictures this time.

Let me see if I can attach them to a new reply.

Whichway

Moronic system, mutter mutter.

Whichway

At the risk of putting out bad/misleading information and getting spanked, here's the best explanation I've found about GI. It's for Cinema 4D, so the settings may be different from Poser but it does give a good idea fo what the pre-pass is doing and how the distribution of the points relates to render quality. Hopefully it will roughly correspond. Mouse over the Settings, Point Distribution and Results labels under each image.

planetpixelemporium.com/tutorialpages/global.html

Thanks, only now I have to go watch all of Ghost in the Shell again.

Whichway

Here is the same setup with IDL turned off and replaced by Material AO. About 7:00 render time.

Whichway

P.S. - Looks as though my edit time expired on me last go 'round and the error message is nearly invisible. I'm fairly new on this forum.