I've been working on a project today that I first started playing around with a couple of weeks.  Previously I have been able to render still images with no problem but today for no particular reason (as far as my brain can tell) after the indirect lighting calculation I'm left with little white dots all over my background prop and what has the appearance of a solid wall of mist in the midground to the background on my scene.  I've tried reseting render settings to default and the classic switching my computer off and on again but the problem still persists.  Any help and advice would be much appriciated.

Your words trigger no memory of related phenomena. Need a picture.

Hope this works.  Never uploaded an image on hear before.

Thanks

Look like it hasn't worked.  I tried to upload it from my harddrive as an attached file.  I don't have a web site or anything.  Not sure how to get images on here?

ETA: there's a size limit, btw...

Best to go into your 2D program and save image for web option.

Max 200kb for forum attachments

maybe OP turned on depth cue or atmosphere.

Depth cue was part of the problem although no idea how it got turned on.  The misty effect has now gone but I'm still getting the little white specs.  They appear exactly where the little red specs appear when poser calculates indirect lighting. 

Thanks

Be interested to see your render & scene info. Sounds like the same issue I've noticed in certain lighting conditions (backlit infinite light with RT shadows) to which I haven't yet found a resolution based on info others have posted in other threads.

Turn off SSS if it's not needed.  It's weird if you can't attach a simple JPG file at the bottom of your replies.

What does SSS stand for?

SSS = Sub Surface Scattering - it's a shader option via some of the material room nodes that simulates the effect of how light interacts with translucent materials like skin, marble or milk.

The interesting thing here is that I've disabled SSS and removed all specular, displacement and bump (it's just diffuse shading), so they don't seem to be contributing to the tiny white dots in the shadow areas. Only IDL is enabled, and the white dots go away when it's disabled. I've also tried various values for RT shadow bias, blur and samples but none seem to cure the problem. Rotating the light a little can help, but isn't an outright solution.

I have no idea what is causing it, other than it seems related to IDL or raytracing.

Correction - in the above example the dots still remain when IDL is disabled. Weird.

Yes that is the same as what I'm getting and the problem still remained when I turned off ID

Just tried using V4 and got same results. Also tried smoothing on and off with no discernable change in results. GC off results in a much darker image of course, but cranking levels up in Photoshop does still reveal some artifacts.

Got this horrible feeling there's something obvious I'm missing here but maybe not.

Or it's a new bug.

I posted a report on mantis some months back (Sr1 didn't fix) - need to update with a few details.

One more test with an intriguing result - when I rotated my light (still behind figure but moved more than just a few degrees) the white dots render in exactly the same places. Moving the camera position however, even by just a little, changes the pattern of artifacts.

Attached Link: http://www.runtimedna.com/forum/showthread.php?65922-White-artifacts-what-s-wrong-with-this-picture&

Displacement was disabled and nothing plugged into that channel for above render. This is something else I think.

Ok, not displacement's fault then.

Another poke: can you match the render with a wireframe render, so one gets an idea if the dots are at polygon boundaries? If they are, it is likely a bug in the geometry part of the renderer (which involves normals, smoothing etc), if they are not, it could be in the materials (might be a specific buggy node).

Quote - Displacement was disabled and nothing plugged into that channel for above render. This is something else I think.

Just a thought: might also be the smooth polygon option in the render settings (which works like displacement) and also rips the mesh apart, i just checked.

Quote - Just tried using V4 and got same results. Also tried smoothing on and off with no discernable change in results. GC off results in a much darker image of course, but cranking levels up in Photoshop does still reveal some artifacts.

Got this horrible feeling there's something obvious I'm missing here but maybe not.

SR2.

SR2 fixes the issue then? I missed the last few messages from SM.

Quote - Doesn't seem to be a direct correlation between all artifacts and mesh, at least on front facing vertices.

Interesting. In your last image the dots turned blue-ish. What is blue in your scene, is there a blue light or blue color in the nodes? 

I overlayed a wireframe preview render onto the ordinary render via a blending mode in photoshop to clearly illustrate the relationship between the two - colour must have crept in as a result. It's not relevant.

Very brief mention of SR2 from Shawn Driscoll.  Is there an SR2?  Where would I go to download it?

I don't think SR2 has been released yet. I assume he was referring to the preview open to beta testers. I haven't had a chance to take a look yet.

I might be throwing a wild turkey into the mix Dan, you haven't tried a different light set for the scene?  It might be difficult to reproduce under those circumstances, but it might be interesting if this behavior is repeatable.  The only other cause could a combination of light settings.

Hm, did some experiments and it looks like these wrong dots are very easy to reproduce. Practically every render has them. They are actually holes (in my case at least), as i can see them with no lights, pure black material on the surface, but a visible surface behind (like in the before mentioned post), in carodan's case probably because of the strong backlight. They even appear in the center of polygons. Make the shading rate lower or the number of pixel samples higher to get more of them, but less pronounced and vice versa. I tried with Poser 8, so your results may be different, but it looks like this is not a new feature, after all.

i remember seeing those voids when i upped the post filter size.  back in Poser 6. 

This cropped up because I was wanting to do very dark backlit renders for a project I'm working on. The artifacts were showing up with just about every render & I was convinced I was doing something stupid.

I've been messing with this on and off for a month now. As usual I've gone about it in an arse-about-face way, gradually switching stuff off (subtractive rather than additive approach) or trying different values in render settings, on lights & with materials. That's why I only just realised the artifacts are present even with the most basic of setups without even any shadows etc. 

I'm just an end user. Hopefully what I've posted here & sent to SM will help someone who actually knows what the problem might be to diagnose & fix. If not I guess I'll have to get used to the idea of spotting them out in photoshop, like we had to in the old days of darkroom photography.

This thread seems to have gone quiet and I've got a bad feeling that the problem is a glitch in poser that cannot be resolved unless smith micro release an update to fix it which is a real shame as the leavel of artifacts on the prop I'm using makes it unuseable for my project.  I tried switching off sss and it didn't make any diference so I'm at a bit of a loss now. 

Quote - This thread seems to have gone quiet and I've got a bad feeling that the problem is a glitch in poser that cannot be resolved unless smith micro release an update to fix it which is a real shame as the leavel of artifacts on the prop I'm using makes it unuseable for my project.  I tried switching off sss and it didn't make any diference so I'm at a bit of a loss now. 

Sorry I stupidly posted my last coment without realising there's a second page to this thread.  Just sounds like I'm stating the obvious now!

Don't worry, you wouldn't be the first person to post without reading the thread (seems quite common in fact). You certainly won't be the last.

As I said earlier in the thread, I reported the issue to SM some time ago and I know it had been assigned to a technician. I also updated it a day or so ago but haven't heard anything else. 

I'm only experiencing this with darker backlit renders so it's not such a big deal. Be good to get it sorted though.

Well I get light specs in shadow that I have to paint out in Photoshop. No IDL, lots of point lights.

Its a night scene with a moon above a log cabin with hanging lights. Terradome is in use for the moon and sky. The moon backlights the cabin. Hence the points lights. Where no light gets to. There is spots in the shadow.

Now I am afraid that this problem that you are all writing about wasn't fixed in SR3.1 

Since you got photoshop, there's a quick way to remove the spots: Filter -> Noise-> Dust & Scratches, 1 pixel, threshold to the liking.

old thread, i know. but i was suddenly having this issue in pp11. i turned off displacement maps in the firefly manual render settings. boom, white spots gone. thank you!! appreciate the help you guys give, even if it was six years ago XD <3