Hi there,

is there anyone else noticing this problem?

I used to render figures in Poser 7 Firefly on black background to prevent a thin, grey line around renders, especially around hair. Using black background solved this problem in Poser 7 with images being exported as PNG, TIF etc.

No line was around those renders.

Now with Poser 8, it appears with every kind of background color / shader that can be chosen, though rendering on black causes the most acceptable result. But the line is there (and wasn't there in Poser 7). Putting that render on a lighter background makes it looks quite odd.

I tried several stuff, setting the post filter size to 2 (which caused a very blurry render), deactivating raytracing etc. but nothing helped.

It is there and seems to be a problem with Poser 8.
Does anyone have an idea to resolve this or noticed that as well?

Thanks =)

It's a bug, I'm not sure if everyone is getting it but it is certainly very common.  Already reported to SM, hopefully it will be fixed with next patch. 

That's great to hear, thanks :-)

Hopefully they will fix it soon.

In the mean time imo the simplest thing to do is just render 10 or so pixels larger than you really need and crop out the garbage.

outoftouch: are you using a png to import into a paint program so that it has transparencies? Just curious, because there is a way to fix that.... I won't go into it unless that's what you're doing ;o).

Laurie

Yes that's they way I'm doing it ;-)

I know that there is a way of selecting the mask, cropping it about 1 pixel and delete the outer part. Unfortunately this always deletes a thin part of the render as well that makes it look kinda weird...

Or do you have another hint? =)

Well, I changed my mind. Here is what you do if you use Photoshop:

Select the offending layer. Go to Layer/Matting/Defringe. It's default is 1 pixel. That's normally the size of the edge I get, and yes...it does happen in Poser 7. Maybe not to the degree it does in 8, but it does happen in 7. If 1 pixel isn't enough, undo it and choose 2 pixels, etc. until you get something acceptable.

Those were for PS 7, btw. I'm not sure what you are using, or if it's even Photoshop, but if you can find something similar in your paint program, that's the way to go ;o).

If the above doesn't work for you, then do a Feather on a very low pixel setting.

Laurie

Thanks Laurie :)

Will try this out as long as we have to wait for the fix :D

OoT mentioned hair, so isn't this to do with transmapped objects showing the thin lines against the background? I tried it in Poser 8 and it seems to work fine for me.

If I've misunderstood the problem... sorry, just ignore me.

IsaoShi: I believe outoftouch is trying to layer a render in a paint program with something behind it, like a photo background for example. Even Poser 7 (and 6) does the dreaded line where the plain background of a render is the transparency of the .png or whatever it's exported as that supports transparency. It's not as bad if the background of the render is black, so I've learned to do that when I intend to layer in Photoshop, but even then, the edge is still there, it's just not as obnoxious...lol.

Laurie

I understand, LaurieA. The above render has a transparent background, but I just converted it to jpg for upload. I layered it over a lighter background in Photoshop to see if I got the lines, but I didn't.
It's no consolation, I know, but for me it's no different in P8 than it was in PPro or P7.

Quote - pjz99, I thought that bug was to do with round the outside of the render area?

I may have misread the original problem but I thought that's what the complaint was about?  Junk on the border of the render?  If not, then oops, different problem ^^

LOL. Sorry.

Seems misunderstandings are the rule of the day ;o).

Laurie

Yup i got em also and they are worse in P8 then 7

I think I DID misread the original post, based on how the responses read - I am talking about garbage on the rectangular border around the frame of the render, not anything else.  If you guys mean something different, then you probably should report this via Smith Micro's tech support page, it probably hasn't been reported:

http://my.smithmicro.com/support/index.html

Could someone please show us what this looks like?
I'm obviously not seeing the same thing as you.
Thanks

I'm pretty sure in P7 that to avoid halos around transmapped items, that even though the background may have been black, you still had to choose 'Render over black' in the render settings.
Does that make a difference in P8? I'm not able to access my P8 box to try it right now.

if anybody does one of those renders with the occlusion errors in the fringe around the perimeter, please post said render along with render settings, render dimensions, script settings et al.

Quote - Well, I changed my mind. Here is what you do if you use Photoshop:

Select the offending layer. Go to Layer/Matting/Defringe. It's default is 1 pixel. That's normally the size of the edge I get, and yes...it does happen in Poser 7. Maybe not to the degree it does in 8, but it does happen in 7. If 1 pixel isn't enough, undo it and choose 2 pixels, etc. until you get something acceptable.

Those were for PS 7, btw. I'm not sure what you are using, or if it's even Photoshop, but if you can find something similar in your paint program, that's the way to go ;o).

If the above doesn't work for you, then do a Feather on a very low pixel setting.

Laurie

Thanks for this tip, Laurie!

Indi.

yur welcome ;o).

Laurie

Quote - I'm pretty sure in P7 that to avoid halos around transmapped items, that even though the background may have been black, you still had to choose 'Render over black' in the render settings.
Does that make a difference in P8? I'm not able to access my P8 box to try it right now.

Yup, that's the way I've always done it. I understood from the above posts that others are also doing it this way, but still getting the problem.

I'm glad I found this thread.

I'm working on a video game and have been doing tons of character animation in Poser 7.  I render my images to png files of the Poser animations.  Import them to layers in Photoshop and run a script to put them into spritesheets.

I have very noticable halos around my Poser 8 png images.  I did not get these halos in Poser 7.  I can run the same animation with the exact same render settings and I get no halos in Poser 7 and very severe halos in Poser 8. 

It is especially exacerbated because I reduce my images in size for my game. 

Unless someone has a good fix for this in Poser, I'm going to have to go back to Poser 7.

I did just download the hotfix from today so I'll let you know if it fixes the problem.

I'll try to do another post with images.

Allan

If Poser 8 still works faster for you (other than the halos), perhaps you could still use it, but run your images thru Photoshop setting up an action for the defringe. Then just batch the whole folder of images :o).

Laurie

This is a real problem.  Note the severe halo around the figure in Poser 8.
(My game character is running with a flare in his hand.  This just happens to be a behind shot)

If anyone can help, let me know.

Here is the Poser 7 image with no halo.

If IsaoShi's suggestion doesn't work, I'm thinking it might be a product of the new lighting perhaps.

Laurie

Here is the same image with exact same render settings with the 10199 hotfix.
All I am doing is adding a black layer underneath the Poser png image in order to show the defined edges/halo.

This looks really bad in game.

Allan

It looks much much better.  This may work but I'll have to render an entire animation sequence and put it into my game.

I'll let you know if it works.

Thanks a ton for the tip.

Allan

In an empty scene, no ground, render over black, a hi-res sphere, set Diffuse_Value = 0 so it is black.

Do you get the transparency halo on that?

Because I do not, and I'm running a pre-release of P8 SR1. If you get it and I don't, that means it is already fixed.

Whoops cross-post - never mind.

bagginsbill,

Well my Poser 8 is tied up right now on rendering an animation sequence but as far as I can tell the render to black setting takes care of the halos.  It's still kind of wierd because I have both Poser 7 and 8 set to Render Over current BG Shader.  That was the default option.  I made a point of keeping my render settings identical because I'm about 3/4 finished with my game and the last thing I wanted to do was go back and render everything over again in order to keep a consistant look.

Do you know why Poser 8 has the halos but Poser 7 does not with the Render Over current BG Shader.  Is it simply a change in light calculations between versions?

Allan 

The PNG transparency has nothing whatsoever to do with lighting, so it isn't lighting changes.

I'm wondering if your background shader was identical in both. Or if the BG wasn't really black.

Halos are produced even in Poser 7 if you render with anything but a black background color. This is because any partial pixel (where geometry doesn't completely fill the pixel) has to have a partial transparency and a color. The color is a pre-mix of the geometry color and the background color. Since Poser doesn't know why you're making a render, or if you plan to save it as PNG with transparency, it renders the color as a proper blended mix of the geometry color and the background color. So if your background isn't black (numerically 0) then you get some of the render-time background color mixed in.

When planning to do a PNG transparency render, you must render of black or over a BG shader that produces black. This has always been the case.

I always got the halo in Poser 7 as well, that's how I knew about using Render over black to fix it.
Can't say why you didn't get it in Poser 7.

Attached Link: http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2005/10/compositing_pre.html

I always wondered which layer mode was a simple Add. Now I know.

(edit) oops, nearly forgot... thanks, Stefan!

(edit again) render from P8 pre-SR1, just for the record. Definitely no halo.
(Interesting optical illusion of a soft glow, though.)