I have tried searching the forum and could find no mention of this problem. I have taken  to modeling low poly count models for the last few years which I had originally made in Poser 6 using the Poser 4 renderer. When I switched to Poser 8 and started using Firefly and raytracing, I got these dark, blotchy shadows all along the vertices on lower polygon sections on figures. I have been tolerating this for years, coping with it by increasing poly counts and doing work arounds like camera scaling to minimize their effects. If I scale the object larger, this effect is exaggerated even more. Scaled down, and it is minimized. I have been rendering everything at 10% scale to get around this, but it is becoming an real issue.

Is there anything I can do to eliminate these black lines, or am I stuck with them?

Any help would be appreciated.

Are your meshes made of tris or quads? Poser has problems with either long, thin tris or quads and they will self-shadow. You should avoid these in your meshes. Also, backfacing polys or colinear facets may cause blotches, as might concave facets.

Otherwise, Poser has no problem with tris OR quads (quads preferred tho), and it even handles ngons, as long as they're flat ;).

Laurie

Thanks for responding. My meshes use quads, which firefly seems to hate. The Poser 4 render engine in Poser 6 had no issues with it, so is it just Firefly then?

It also seems to relate to scale as well. Like I posted, if I scale the whole scene down to 10% or 5% of normal figure size, it greatly minimizes this effect, and when dealing with large objects it is exaggerated. Is there a way of "tricking" Poser into thinking everything is at reduced scale. This and increasing the camera scale are the only ways I know to fight this.

Showing a wireframe of the models might help.
And showing the render settings.
What happens when you render with smooth polygons ON and change the crease angle.
A ziilon questions, but you do not give a lot of info.

I don't have Poser on this computer, but the meshes use some sections of long 4 sided polygons, which is where the issue lies. It doesn't matter whether I set polygon smoothing at 80, or 180, it still does it. Describing it, I have a character where the neck has elongated polygons up the neck, and at the vertice of each polygon is a long blotchy shadow that makes it look like they have gills. Only it does this everywhere. Down the arms, legs, torso. Even areas that aren't excessively enlongated, if they are low poly, it does it.

The issue is related to scale. I have modelled too many low-polygon objects to redo everything. If I have to keep rendering everything at 5% scale I will, but doing that gives grainy shadow effects and it messes with material settings, which I guess brings up another point - Is there a way to scale material zones with the scale of an object? I didn't notice that Poser does this until I started rendering this way, but if you scale down an object, the material settings don't scale with it. A material with a slightly lumpy surface turns into a spiky concrete texture when it scales down to 5%.

Maybe I am just being stubborn, but there has to be another work around.

I work almost exclusively with Lo Poly but try to keep them +/- square even when morphing to the extreme.

Look at the thread here about Dark skin.
See how Lo Poly they are? Not a single false shadow.

Show a wireframe and we might give more idea's.

I do not think it is the Low poly, but more the Long Poly's.

Thanks.

I will have to post the mesh tomorrow, but it is because it uses a lot of long polys. I guess specifically what I want to understand is what scale has to do with the issue, and how I can manipulate it to overcome the issue. I model in Wings3d if that has any bearing at all.

Avoid long and long, thin polys. Try to keep a more uniform mesh if possible.

What I am saying is that I have found a way to make Poser accept long polys, I just want a better way. Look at the image I have posted (please ignore how awful it is, this model simply illustrates my point best)

At 100% scale it has nasty marks on the neck and legs. This is even worse at 200% scale. But at 10% scale they are virtually gone. I also want to point out that around the neck the polys are relatively square. The issue I have with using 10% scale is that it creates shadow distortions (like under the nose). This concept works in reverse too by increasing the camera scale.

Is there anyway to alter the default sense of scale in Poser to get the quality of 10% scale without the shadow issues? Maybe someone else who knows better about lighting or cameras settings can build on this.

OHHHHH! You're getting edge shading. I've run into this too many times to count. I've never found a good way to get rid of it (it normally shows up on surfaces that curve inward, but not so much on surfaces that curve outward...weird). If you find a way to get rid of this, please share. LOL.

And no, changing the smoothing angle doesn't help at all.

Laurie

Quote - OHHHHH! You're getting edge shading. I've run into this too many times to count. I've never found a good way to get rid of it (it normally shows up on surfaces that curve inward, but not so much on surfaces that curve outward...weird). If you find a way to get rid of this, please share. LOL.

And no, changing the smoothing angle doesn't help at all.

Laurie

For whatever reason, scaling the entire object / character / scene/ to around 5-10% more or less eliminates this, it is just a major pain because the lighting looks a bit off and you have to adjust the material settings to match the scale. But it works.

This looks a lot like self-shadowing to me, probably from ambient occlusion. Do you have ambient occlusion or ray traced shadows enabled for some of the lights? Try increasing the shadow bias and AO bias, that should fix it.

stewer, this happens even with just plain IDL. I've even had this happen with plain old depth map shadows. This has been around for many versions - IIRC, I had this problem as far back as Poser 6 or 7 - before IDL.

Laurie

Quote - This looks a lot like self-shadowing to me, probably from ambient occlusion. Do you have ambient occlusion or ray traced shadows enabled for some of the lights? Try increasing the shadow bias and AO bias, that should fix it.

I am using the HDR IBL lights that come with Poser 8, which is using AO. I have noticed these results with all lights though. I have tried adjusting these values with no noticeable change. I am curious though as I haven't really played around with it much, what does the shadow bias dial do exactly?

Also, sorry if I am being a broken record here, but does anyone know why scaling an object smaller reduces this effect, and increasing the size of an object makes it worse? I just feel like understanding this will be the solution to getting rid of the edge shadows.

Quote - This looks a lot like self-shadowing to me, probably from ambient occlusion. Do you have ambient occlusion or ray traced shadows enabled for some of the lights? Try increasing the shadow bias and AO bias, that should fix it.

I was mistaken. I just tried several renders and it is only doing it with the AO (I didn't realize how much I have ingrained it in all of my light sets). I tried increasing the bias under Scene AO Options and it has solved the problem! Thanks, you have seriously made my day!

I dunno how that could fix it when I get it all the time and I NEVER use AO. Not on the lights and not in my shaders. Some meshes just get it...no matter what I do. No matter how much I smooth, subdivide, whatever. I never use canned or bought lights and make 99% of my own shaders.

I'll have to dig something out that I know had a problem and fool around with some settings ;).

Laurie

Quote - I dunno how that could fix it when I get it all the time and I NEVER use AO. Not on the lights and not in my shaders. Some meshes just get it...no matter what I do. No matter how much I smooth, subdivide, whatever. I never use canned or bought lights and make 99% of my own shaders.

I'll have to dig something out that I know had a problem and fool around with some settings ;).

Laurie

I don't know, it worked for me. I just upped the AO bias by about 10x and the lines disappeared. Does your issue look the same as mine? Is your's shadows, or is the mesh actually splitting?

I've pretty much tried everything...nothing I've tried has worked thus far. I don't know why it would be mesh splitting when everything's welded. I just don't know ;).

Laurie

Quote - I've pretty much tried everything...nothing I've tried has worked thus far. I don't know why it would be mesh splitting when everything's welded. I just don't know ;).

Laurie

What kind of objects do that for you? I had an issue with mesh splitting, especially with low poly cylinderical objects, and they were welded too. If it is shadows, I couldn't really guess at the problem as that is the reason I started this thread in the first place.

render engines,lights,shaders settings.
about all render engines ya half to fight with shadow settings.
some render engines are better at diffrent things.

balance topology helps.

Bumps help a lot with low polycount meshes "game meshes".
Game meshes are Tri'ed.

some older render engines don't care about back facing pologones
but most newer ones will.

Hello,

Probably the same problem as I reported in the following thread.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2851806

Allstereo