Hi folks,

I'm losing my hair with this. I'm getting blotches of what appear to be shadow over my scene, on furnishings and my character alike. Some of the areas affected are bathed in light and have nothing to disturb the light hitting them. I have been messing and fiddling and forking about with the render settings for hours, re-rendering countless times and I think what I've found is that the IDL is somehow causing a conflict somewhere, because with it off, it doesn't happen. I've played with pretty much everything else, including min shading rate, pixel samples, irradiance caching etc. I've changed the IDL quality but it doesn't seem to be making a difference. I need IDL on for this.

Could someone help, please?

Glen.

Not at my PC so I can't post pics but go into your render settings to Raytrace Min shadow point .2 or point .4 Next Box to 40-60, and last box to point .2. See if that does it for you until I can grab a screenies of my final IDL settings for you.

Thank you very much, I'll give it a go when I load it next (had to move onto something else before I went totally bald again).

I think the common adage "Never work with children or animals" could do with being changed to "Never work with children, animals or meshes".

Found the thread where I posted them before.... First one is render settings. Second one applies to lights in your scene.

Oops.. Reverse that order. First is light. LOL

Hey Glen, Can you post up a picture of your render? The splotches are coming from IDL and may not be able to be fixed depending on how you are lighting up your scene. If you have a couple of small objects that you are tuning into light bulbs you will get these splotches.

Hi folks,

Thank you very much to 3DFineries for the help, I'll give it a go now.

Unfortunately, I'm not able to post the render at the moment, as it has been swamped out of the cache by countless area renders I've done since. I'll give 3DFineries' advice a shot and see where we get to. The lighting rig is a slightly adapted version of one I have used many times in the past with next to no issues. I created it from (IIRC) one of the default Poser presets in the making of Annie's 'Purity' set, which can be seen here: [http://glen85.deviantart.com/gallery/44536752/Annette-Purity]. The only change has been the addition of a specular-only light, as specularity was missing from the original. It does not include 'mesh lighting' in any way, and the background 'dome' I've used is set so that it does not cast shadows and is not a light emitter; its sole purpose is to create a seamless background and to give Annie's eyes something to reflect in raytracing. I've tried killing the newly added specular-only light but have still experienced the same problems.

If you'd like, I can share the light rig, if I can find out how to do it.

I'm using the 'Nights In White Satin' set from the late, great StudioArtVartanian, and haven't had these artefacts appear on other sets either. So, bearing in mind I've used the lights before and not had a problem, the character and her materials before and not had a problem, the scene items before and not had a problem, and the render settings before and not had a problem, I can only guess that it's something caused by a conflict. I have had these artefacts appear in much less noticeable amounts in other scenes, with different characters, lights and render settings, but they were easily fixed in post, but I'd like to find out exactly what is causing this so I don't face the problem again.

I'll get a render put up no matter what the outcome is, but it tends to take absolutely ages, unfortunately.

Cheers,

Glen.

another thought: I recently finished up some work with my new version of Poser 11 Pro. Previously I had been using Poser Pro 2014. The Firefly renders in 11 had some extra splotchy marks that did not show up previously in PP2014. I had to go back and re-render these images in 2014 to get rid of the splotchy marks.

So this is a crop of one of the areas in question. This is with the render settings suggested by 3DFineries.

This is the layout of the lights, numbered (from left to right 1, 2 and 3 along the top, 4 in the middle, which is the specular-only light and 5 at the bottom).

Light 1

Light 2

Light 3

Light 4

Light 5

As I said before, this light set-up has done me many good turns in the past and I like the evenness and slight blue tint it gives to my scenes, so I would only be happy changing it if the change(s) didn't affect these factors.

Cheers,

Glen.

I hadn't thought of trying it in 11; I don't really use it much, I'm really not keen on it, bit of a stick in the mud I guess. I'll try loading the scene up and giving it a whirl to see if anything changes. Thanks! :)

You have some sort of model on top of the skin that is transmaped for body hair. This is the problem. I have this same problem with some clothing items that have transmaps (like cutoff jeans) underneath the transparent sections the skin will get those nasty splotches that look like bruises. Take out the hair layer and they will go away. Superfly does not have this problem with transparent objects and SSS skin.

Thanks. I used to use an extra V4 figure with trans maps for body hair, but this is actually sculpted with no trans maps. Also, making the hair invisible doesn't solve it either. Thank you though.

I've tried it with the same render settings in '11, exactly the same. Literally the only thing that makes it disappear is turning off IDL. :(

Hi Glen

I would recommend to use Dimension 3D Render Firefly script with which you will have lot more control

Here are my Firelfy settings,if you have 4 core CPU/8 threads then in column Number of threads put 8

And my test renders,its simple dirty render,in this one I upped bounces to 3 an Intensity to 1.65 which hasn't been best way

Cropped arm with hair,hair is from Exnem

and updated lights plus settings used above(render took 5 minutes) with IDL,SSS etc

And last observation,don't use Depth traced shadows with IDL,try use Raytraced shadows and try not to use too many IBL lights,IBL shouldn't be used with IDL,should be used in normal rendering and not with IDL,sometimes Depth traced shadows can cause issues down the line like splotches

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

If I sent in renders with arm hair like that I wouldn't get paid, LOL. To each his own!

Is this a V4 character? What is the name of the character and the hair?

GAH!!!

Renderosity staff, please, please, please, please, please sort out the damn notifications for forum posts! I get one or two, then they stop!

Cheers folks, I'll give it another go with the suggestions and see what happens.

Acrionx, this is the V4 Body Hair set from Exnem, the promo renders don't do it justice, I can assure you. There are sometimes problems with aftermarket morphs (Annie uses the Lali's Bits morphs, as well as various others and a shorter height preset), but it's generally good to work with. My only real disappointment is the lack of hair for the top of the feet, the back of the hand and writer's palm and the face. Who doesn't love to see downy fur on a girl's jawline and ears? See the attached image of Annie to get a feel for what can be achieved with it. For this, I created my own hair material. (Open the image or download it to see in full size)

I mean what is the name of the hair set on the top of the nurse's head. I was referring to the picture jura11 posted. LOL. And what's the name of the character in the nurse outfit?

acrionx posted at 12:40AM Sat, 27 August 2016 - #4281224

I mean what is the name of the hair set on the top of the nurse's head. I was referring to the picture jura11 posted. LOL. And what's the name of the character in the nurse outfit?

Hi there

Hair is I think Jewel Hair from SWAM(sold over on DAZ3D) and character is VH Vanilla,but textures are from MDD and EZ Skin 3 applied

Hope this helps

Thanks,Jura

Thank you jura!

acrionx posted at 7:31PM Sat, 27 August 2016 - #4281224

I mean what is the name of the hair set on the top of the nurse's head. I was referring to the picture jura11 posted. LOL. And what's the name of the character in the nurse outfit?

I was well aware of the fact that you were referring to Jura11'a post, however, since you did not specify whether by 'hair' you meant head hair or body hair, I had assumed that your post had at least something to do with the topic at hand, thus assumed that you were referring to body hair. You see, I credited you with at least a fraction of decorum by assuming that you did not hijack a thread simply to get off-topic information after providing no input to it.

More fool me, I suppose.