Was wondering if anyone had some input on these rendering anomalies I've been encountering in Poser 8.0.3...

1. This example is a banding effect that seems to happen on both image based and procedural textures, if you look at the gradient effect on the background you can clearly see the banding. Thus far my research into this has yielded no solutions.

Raytrace Spot- SMB 0.250, Pixel Samples 6, Min Shading Rate 0.2

2. Heres some artifacts where it appears the mesh is beginning to show... I've noticed that raising the shadow min bias lessens the artifacts (at the expense of more detailed shadows). I've also noticed that turning smoothing off eliminates them as does giving the model an additional level of sub-division (neither which is an agreeable solution).

Same lighting and render settings as example 1.

I've been scouring the forums in search of threads discussing these problems and haven't really found any workable answers.
Any input would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, yeah.  Is it my imagination or is Poser 8 more prone to render problems than Poser 7? Judging from numerous comments I've read, incarnations of Poser 8 and up seem to be more unstable?

Thanks in advance.

Regarding the artifacts in (2):

Seems to be a smoothing problem. Have you tried adjusting the Crease Angle?

You have AO on in yr setting or on the light?

Banding is a common problem in computer graphics due to the limited amount of shades. It is usually dealt with in post by adding noise.

@CaptainMarc, Yeah tried playing around with the crease angle in various ways. no effect. Although completely disabling smoothing made it stop.

@Ghostman, no AO at all.

There's some IDL in example one but that has no bearing on the banding effect. In example 2, it's strictly raytrace light. No IBL, no AO on the light or the materials. I've been finding I've had to make all kinds of special concessions when modeling for poser due to it's totally obnoxious smoothing functions. Unfortunately I don't have a modelling app or UV utility that can apply smoothing groups.

9 times out of 10 I can make adjustments to eliminate the artifacts in example 2, It would be nice to track down a more comfortable solution, though.

As far as example 1 goes, I don't have a clue.

Noise, huh. I'll give that a shot in photoshop. Any kind of blur seems to exacerbate the problem. Thanks for the tip, bobbesch.

light settings for both examples.

... Render settings, ditto.