My problem is this.  Some of the polygons are rendering dark and others are rendering normally.  Also, as you can see on the viewport windows, there appear to be artifacts appearing on them.  And finally, if you look at the bottom ledge of the viewport, you can see that the left side of it has a nice sharp crease where the right side doesn't.  There appears to be some weird render problem up the right side of the viewport as well.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions on what is causing this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks...
Al

Perhaps if you screencap your render settings, we can get a better idea what is going on.

I should let you know that I really don't use Poser very much, so I hope this is what you are looking for.

Al

[edit]

I noticed when I reloaded the poser file that the edges around the viewport now look correct.

[/edit]

This is an age-old problem, and it has to do with Poser's smoothing function. Acute angles create not so cute artefacts.

There are two possibilities:
-- slice the objects into discrete, separated mesh at the point where the angles are acute, or
-- add some additional mesh (edge-loops) near to the bevel.

In this discussion, you can see what solution I tried, and what others suggested.

Yes, it's probably a mixture of bad smoothing and flipped normals.

Laurie

Thanks for the info.

I know it isn't the normals, as I've double checked them inside C4D before exporting to OBJ.

I will try separating the viewport into a separate mesh and see how that works.

Al

Select the prop, go to the Properties panel, deselect Smooth Polygons and set your Crease Angle to 20...now try another render.
If this doesn't correct it then you'll need to take your obj into another program and smooth the normal face angles.

Not saying this next statement to be-little you, just confirming with you that this is an age old problem with Poser, it can be solved but you have to know the dance steps.

Those might also be depth-mapped shadow artifacts - what does it look like with shadows off?
Looking at the edge of the "window" inset, I think it is likely you will have to bevel that loop of edges that you want to render sharp, since their angle ranges from super steep to super shallow on that same loop.

Attached Link: http://lostin3d.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!8100B3DBFFBF70D0!555

http://www.sharecg.com/v/26424/3d-model/Jupiter-2-Add-on-Modules-for-Upper-Deck

and here:
http://www.sharecg.com/v/26423/3D-Model/Jupiter-2-Flight-Console

Also, the Poser Jupiter 2 Project has already been surpassed by another CGI artist on YouTube working in C4D as well I believe. Some of his videos are here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x1W41Vxsyk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zQ42G70GfE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3QTh91eROs

Maybe they just wanna make it for the sake of making it LIS ;o). Entirely acceptable...lol.

Laurie

Nobody's sayin' they can't Laurie. I just asked why? It's already being done better than I did in the LostInSpace Yahoo Props group by RC Haselius. You wanna be blown away, go look at those YouTube links I added to my post while you were replying to me. Phil Hamilton and I are already begging the guy to export his C4D work into OBJ so we can use it in Poser. He's "Thinking" about it. LOL!

I'm kinda hard-headed that way too.... Sometimes I just wanna do it myself ;o). It's fun and I learn in the process...hehe. Let's take the OP for instance. He/she's already finding out what happens when importing a model into Poser and the hoops one must jump through to get it right.

Laurie

Hey, I'm not roadblocking anyone from learning. Heaven forbid. It was just an honest question if he's doing it "For a Friend", my point was maybe his friend would like to have one NOW that already exists. That certainly doesn't mean stop working on what he's working on. As I've already shown, someone has already made a "Better Wheel" than the one I had. :tt2:

Or maybe we could just stay with the OP instead of pimping your stuff.

I had built the Jupiter 2 way in the past using Anim8or and again in Animation:Master.  Phil had seen my OBJ export from Animation:Master that I had uploaded to Sci-Fi Meshes.  He had asked if I could provide it in a different format for Poser. 

Since I had been working on a more accurate Season 1 J2 in Cinema 4D, I told Phil that I could work with this one and convert it to Poser.

You can see my J2 here www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/showthread.php  .  I was working from blueprints of the original models and props as well as screens shots and videos from season 1.

Phil has used a Poser J2 before, but was looking for something better so I agreed to work with him on this.  I am removing some of the extreme detail pieces for the Poser model (such as screws in the panel faces, etc.) that isn't really needed for a Poser model.  I also made the center control panel for him, which wasn't in Season 1.

The attached image is of the Electrodata B205 console that is used on the Jupiter 2.  The top render was done in C4D and the bottom render is the Poser version.  I have provide Phil with the textures so he can apply them to the model in Poser.  This has been another great learning experience for me in converting C4D models to another format.

As I mentioned earlier, I really don't use Poser all that much so I wasn't really aware of any other Jupiter 2 Poser models out there. 

Oh well, this is something that I really enjoy doing as a hobby when I am done work.

Al

For many of your models coming into Poser, you will probably want to turn off polygon smoothing until you have a really solid grip on how it behaves - it has some things in common with Catmull-Clark subdivision but it uses different curves.  Basically Catmull-Clark treats points in the control mesh as points on B-splines, and Reyes polygon smoothing (which is what Poser does) treats points as curves more like Akima splines, resulting in some really unexpected bulging at corners that are not tightly beveled.  In general you'll probably need more base polys to do the same things with Reyes that you can with Catmull-Clark.

Quote - Or maybe we could just stay with the OP instead of pimping your stuff.

There's nothing WRONG with pimping FREEBIES. If I was selling something here you'd have a leg to stand on. I'm just trying to share what I have.

Quote - Since I had been working on a more accurate Season 1 J2 in Cinema 4D, I told Phil that I could work with this one and convert it to Poser.

Ah, so Phil's the friend. Nevermind then. He and I both have been looking for a better Jupiter 2 than what I had originally done. I'm on the Yahoo list as well.

Thanks for the explanation on how Poser treats the models it imports.  Interesting reading on the Reyes polygon smoothing.  I used to do a lot of graphics programming about 15 years ago, but haven't touched it in about 10 years now.

And, I don't mind if others post links to their stuff in my threads.  It is always fun to see what others are doing.

I looked at the ShareCG models, and although not bad, I am trying to achieve a lot higher level of detail and accuracy.

Al

Well to be fair, if I had known your "Friend" was Phil Hamilton I would have kept my fingers off the keyboard as he and I have done stuff together already and I knew he had the Poser version I had worked on. I didn't feel I was stepping on toes letting you know something existed already.

Quote - Thanks for the explanation on how Poser treats the models it imports.  Interesting reading on the Reyes polygon smoothing.  I used to do a lot of graphics programming about 15 years ago, but haven't touched it in about 10 years now.

Something else you should know about Poser. It doesn't like double sided poly's very much I've been told. They tend to render as weird artifacts unless you add displacment to them. There's a thread about it here:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2782925

"Double-side polygons" that come in via OBJ format are actually duplicated polygons, with the normals facing one way for one set and facing the other way for the other set.  This really is not a good thing to do in Poser (or really any app) - they just add overhead (doubled poly count for one thing) and make nasty problems in a variety of ways.  I don't think people realize what happens when they export this way via OBJ format.

render with raytraced shadows and ou will not have problems

Something else to consider: You want something much more detailed.. but also bear in mind, poser can't really handle really high poly objects like high end applications can. You might end up with an unworkable model once completed.

More accuracy makes sense, but if you go too far over the top on polycount, you'll just end up with something unuseable.

Try setting your lights with these settings in the parameter window:

Shadow Blur Radius at 10
Shadow Min Bias at 0.2

for every light.

Quote - Something else to consider: You want something much more detailed.. but also bear in mind, poser can't really handle really high poly objects like high end applications can. You might end up with an unworkable model once completed.

More accuracy makes sense, but if you go too far over the top on polycount, you'll just end up with something unuseable.

Yeah Gareee's right there. The current Poser Jupiter 2 with the interior built mostly of Poser Primitives is very hard on Poser's resources. It loads, but it didn't want to load in Poser 5 very well.

Attached Link: UVMapper

There's a free copy available and the directions are easy.

Quote - My problem is this.  Some of the polygons are rendering dark and others are rendering normally.

An image showing the mesh will show the problem.

Actually, by breaking the mesh up into separate pieces around the sharp creases pretty much solved my issues.  It is a bit more work in the building stage, but it works out great in Poser.

As for the high poly meshes, I reworked the Electrodata console and lowered the poly count considerably.  It went from 68K polys down to 15.5K polys and yet still looks pretty much the same.  It will definitely be less of a resource hog now and can use 3 consoles with less polys than just the 1.

I want to thank everyone who replied to this.

Al

First, the areas marked with an X (the landing gear bays) are separate meshes that are not physically attached to the bottom hull.

In the top image is the wire frame.  It is pretty straight forward.  A lathed profile for the lower hull, with 3 sections cut out for the landing gear bays.  You can also see the render settings being used in the bottom render.

In the bottom render there are areas that are rendering differently than the others (in marked areas).  I have verified that all normals are facing the correct way.  I have tried rendering with Smooth Polygons checked and unchecked, Final Render settings as well as the default render settings.

Again, any help would be appreciated.  I've been trying to resolve this for the past day or so now.  Everything else is looking okay on the hull.

Thanks in advance...
Al

Quote - Actually, by breaking the mesh up into separate pieces around the sharp creases pretty much solved my issues.

Just to warn you, this has a couple of major downsides:  Polygon smoothing does not work well with this trick (it can make gaps appear), and displacement mapping can do unexpectedly sharp/bad things at that polygon break also.  As long as you're aware of this that's fine, what you're doing there is a common technique in Poser modeling (e.g. Stonemason does this with most of his models).

Regarding your new problem, that's actually a symptom of what I was just saying about polygon smoothing.  Maybe just turn off polygon smoothing for the entire object (you see the option for that in one of your screenshots there).  What is going on is the edges of the geometry that are loose are getting some micropolygons drawn in around them at render time, and this will make the surface irregular like you're seeing.

I tried turning Smooth Polygons off in both of those images and it still looked the same.

Not sure what you mean by micropolygons though.

Post the manual settings of  you render window.  It contains more practical information.  IIRC, the sensible remedy to this symptom is applying a noise node to a low setting displacement value.

Micropolygons are what Poser (and all Reyes renderers) use to do polygon smoothing.  If it still isn't rendering with a smooth-looking surface there might be caused by depth-mapped shadows, which cause a variety of crappy artifacts - try rendering with shadows turned off and see if it looks any different.  It seems likely to me that it's just wonky phong shading coming from those long polygons that go from the outside of the saucer to the center, you might also check to see if those are broken from the inner "hub" structure".

Are you sure the landing gear bays are not attached to the rest of the mesh? Try selecting just the polygons in the landing gear bays, cutting them and then pasting them back in, and then see what happens.

I tried turning off the shadows on the lights, but no luck with the render.

Next, I removed the poly's from the hull that were hidden by the fusion core.  Imported it into Poser, and the weird render stuff was gone from the hull.  Turned shadows back on and things were still good.

I am modeling the Jupiter 2 in Cinema 4D, then exporting to OBJ for import into Poser.  It is taking a bit of getting used to the work flow, but it seems to be working okay.  I can definitely confirm that the landing gear bays are separate meshes from the hull.  When I import into Poser, I am going with the default settings, making sure that "Weld identical vertices" is unchecked so that there is no chance of the individual meshes joining together.

Thanks once again...
Al

Quote -

Just to warn you, this has a couple of major downsides:  Polygon smoothing does not work well with this trick (it can make gaps appear), and displacement mapping can do unexpectedly sharp/bad things at that polygon break also.  As long as you're aware of this that's fine, what you're doing there is a common technique in Poser modeling (e.g. Stonemason does this with most of his models)..

maybe some of my older models but i havent split verts for a long time now..I generaly use smooth groups or just add extra control loops

Quote - As for the high poly meshes, I reworked the Electrodata console and lowered the poly count considerably.  It went from 68K polys down to 15.5K polys and yet still looks pretty much the same.  It will definitely be less of a resource hog now and can use 3 consoles with less polys than just the 1.

Yeah you're going to have to do a lot of trimming of Polys to keep it Poser friendly. Even at 15.5k polys, those are going to add up with all the rest of the interior details. Don't forget textures for meshes will be vying for memory space as well.

Does Poser support Proxy models?

By this I mean that you initially use a low poly proxy model for all your animating and tests.  Then when its time to do the final render, you swap your Proxy low res model for the good high res model without losing any of the settings, animating, etc.

Al

No I'm afraid not. That's something for the expensive 3D software packages like C4D. One of the tricks of getting high detail on Poser meshes is to use detailed textures with displacement instead of high poly counts.

Actually, C4D doesn't have it either.  The reason I am asking is that another software package I use (Animation:Master) does have it.  It is extremely handy as things can really start to slow down when you get over 10,000 patches.  A:M is a spline/patch modelling package.  And A:M is a fairly low priced package at just under $400 for a CD version or around $70-80 a year for a subscription version.

I can see using lower poly counts on some things, but on a multi-curved surface like the J2 hull, the lower poly count ended up in a segmented looking render.  In C4D you can adjust the phong shading which helped the surface, but along edges the segmentation was noticeable.

I suppose for outside shots of the J2, I can use a very simple extrement low poly interior with very detailed textures (rendered from the actual props).  When working on the inside shots, you wouldn't even need the exterior hull unless you were doing a walk from inside to outside in 1 continuous shot.

Anyone have any idea around homw many polys that Poser starts to get slow?  I am assuming this is a 32 bit so it woudn't matter how much RAM I was using with my 64 bit Windows OS.

Al

It depends on which version of Poser we're talking about. Poser Pro and Pro 2010 obviously have better memory management than your basic Posers 1 thru 8. Somewhere around here there's probably an old thread where people tested the limits with Vicky's. I have a vague memory of the topic coming up a few years ago.

Might have been me, a while back somebody made some claim that you couldn't load more than 2 or 3 V4s in a scene without crashing Poser or some shit like that - so I loaded and rendered 24 or so.

edit: and that was with Poser 7

That's probably the one. Hehehe... Did you add up the poly count of all those Vickies? I forget.