Hi everyone,

I'm working on a mask for Michael 4, and it's still in .obj format, but when I created the texture for it, then imported it into Poser and rendered it, some odd black marks showed up on it. It's not the texture map, but something with the model itself, and I'm hoping someone recognizes the issue and can help me correct it. They show up around the holes for his eyes (see the picture), and nowhere else.

I created it by importing an M4 head into Wings, then highlighting the polys that would represent the shape of the mask. I then used the "Extract" feature to lift them off the head. At this point, it looked more like a block in the shape of the top of M4's head, so I used the "Hole" feature to hollow it out. Now it was the right shape, but paper thin looking, so I highlighted the inside of the mask, and used "Extrude">"Normal" to pull the surface polys out just a tad, and thus "thicken" the mask. At that point it actually looked like it was made of a thick material, not tissue paper. From there, I textured as usual just as with any other model, and that's how I got to where I am. I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction, as the black marks only show up when it's rendered.

Thanks in advance - Steve

Do you have a bump map? If so, test to see if the black marks show up when the bump map is disconnected. Ive seen something like this when a bump map is set too strong.

If you have 2 "layers" of geometry in the model then it might be poke-thru you're seeing in those black lines. That's what it looks like to me. Could also be a combination of that and whatever bump you have set on the material. 

Clothing should only be one layer, all normals facing out (away from the figure). The geometry is actually paper thin so to acheive the illusion of actual cloth and thickness, you use the proper combination of material settings, bump, normal and displacement maps. 

 

~Shane

Could be self shadowing.

Go into the material room and tick "Normals_Forward" for the mask materials and see if that helps.

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A lot of (conforming) Poser clothes are double layered, but it's usually better to only double-layer a few rows of polygons along the seams and edges, and not the whole cloth.

Quote - Do you have a bump map? If so, test to see if the black marks show up when the bump map is disconnected. Ive seen something like this when a bump map is set too strong.

 

Same goes for displacement but it is most likely what Ambient Shade and Joe have suggested. Delete the interrior of the mask. 

It depends on how thick/thin the mesh is. Poser doesn't like two sided meshes that are very very thin...either add more thickness or delete the back side as other have suggested.

Laurie

Before you do too much work, bear in mind that you won't be able to distribute the result, assuming that was your plan. If you want something to sell or give away you can't use any of M4's geometry. In fact, starting again with a clean mesh will very likely lose the black marks anyway.

If it's for personal use then you can safely ignore me. There are plenty of mesh issues that Poser will balk at, but the folks above me have covered most of them, I think.

If it persists, post a wireframe or similar view.  

 

Try the procedure you used to create the mask, but this time, use Shell Extrude. When you get the mask out to the thickness you want it, then click on the Body mode to select the entire mask, then right click and click on separate. This will work better than using extract.

Also, if you extrude the outside instead of the inside of the mask, it might work better too. Those lines are caused by Wings pulling some of the vertices with it when you extrude on an extraction.

Good suggestions, everyone - thanks for the advice. Now I'm off to try some of them. And English Bob - good catch. That was my intention, but I don't want to do anything that's not on the up and up, so I'll begin again from scratch with a generic shape in Wings and see how well I can do, shaping it to match M4... amybe sme other figures as well.

But before I do, I'm going to try out some of these suggestions to see what happens. It's good info to know for future projects! The latest version of Wings has a "sculpt" tool, which should help.

I encountered this problem on the daz millenium subdragon's wings before. It happens in areas that are very thin. The 2 fixes for it that worked were:

1. In your render settings, check "remove backfacing polys"

2. Go to the advanced material room, and select the material zone of the area you're having the artifacts. Add a simple color node to the displacement for those particular material zones, and set it to around .01. You might have to mess with that number a bit to get the results you want.

Not sure if your problem is the same, but it might be worth a shot to try these things. If it's for personal use, the first trick would be best, but if you're planning on selling this, you definitely want to find the cause of the issue or use #2. Hope it fixes your problems!

Here's a MR that might be of interest to you...  incredibly useful.

http://www.sharecg.com/v/67360/gallery/5/3D-Model/Quicks-Quick-Resource-Meshes

best to go with one-sided geometry with extrusions curving into the areas that will suggest thickness, eye-holes etc. You'll save on polys, have the illusion of thickness, and avoid the problems you are encountering. (easier to UV, too).

just another suggestion, my 2ct, since the mask is quite thin and quite close to M's face.

The mask might cast shadows onto M's face, and the Shadow Min Bias of the light lifts the shadows a bit from a face (to prevent artifacts from displacement mapping). But it might lift too much and warp the shadow to the front side of the mask. So, reducing the SMB for the light(s) - and perhaps turning off shadow casting for the mask - might be of some help as well.

I tried a test of the process I suggested to you, and here are the results. Pretty nice really, but yeah, it's from Miki's mesh so you couldn't use it for anything other than your own purposes.

This process creates a mask that is directly in contact with her face so there are no shadow artifacts to worry about.

If I knew how to do tutorials, I would show you the process I use to create masks. I've been able to do face masks, cowls, even Borg prosthetics.

 

not used wings for a long long time

but blender has a shrink fit modifier which would be ideal for this type of thing

 

and it will be your own mesh ;-)

Quote - not used wings for a long long time

but blender has a shrink fit modifier which would be ideal for this type of thing

 

and it will be your own mesh ;-)

Blender is part of my process. I model the mask in Wings, use Blender for the shrinkwrap modifier, then back into Wings for the final  touches. I sometimes use Sculptris too if I am making a cowl.

For masks I load a high res cloth mesh an use the cloth room to shape it , then I fix the mesh in lightwave to trim the edges to shape.

Blender is a mystery to me. I'm trying to learn it here and there..... mainly for the UV mapping ability. I used to use Wings as my modeling program, then UV Mapper Pro as my mapping software, but UV Mapper Pro doesn't work in a machine running Windows 8.

I'm experimenting now with the technique you described Rokket. I need to try and learn Blender so I can also try what you suggested Heddheld.

> Quote - Blender is a mystery to me. I'm trying to learn it here and there..... mainly for the UV mapping ability. I used to use Wings as my modeling program, then UV Mapper Pro as my mapping software, but UV Mapper Pro doesn't work in a machine running Windows 8. > > I'm experimenting now with the technique you described Rokket. I need to try and learn Blender so I can also try what you suggested Heddheld.

PM me if you want a step by step on how I make it work. It works really well if you are making a mesh you don't want to distribute. Using the combination of Wings and Blender works better because it's your own mesh.

I started messing around with making my own mask and ended up making an entire costume. I even modeled a zipper, which is a first for me. Turned out pretty nice, but I need to work on the boots...

That does indeed look very good!