Unfortunately I was not able to download or experiment further over the weekend.  I've been pretty swamped with some other things that had to take priority.   I'm hoping next weekend to get back to it.

Mark, I agree, its probably an issue with the shadow map and small objects.  I'm still curious if I can duplicate Laurie's results with Wing's, that is, not having it happen.  If it works then I suspect there may be something different in the way Wings exports the obj format, I can't think what else it might be.  If it still happens then I wonder if it perhaps has something to do with hardware and OS (graphics card, Mac vs Windoze... I really wish I could switch to Linux, but that's another discussion entirely).

Doubt I'll solve it but I might at least zero in on what specifically the problem is.  My hope is that might be enough to get a patch out of SM fixing it.

But for now at least my shaving kit is complete and soon as I have time to do a few extra texture sets for it, I'll bundle it up and put it in free stuff.   So at least there's that.

Also this account is probably going to go inactive sometime this week.  I'm rebuilding my web site and will be setting up a new account here using the same name as the site and my twitter account just to keep things sorted.   The new username will be BardicHeart  (as in my avatar)

Okay, using those default settings it renders okay for me too.  However, soon as I check the Cast Shadows box, I'm back to the wonky shadows.

With Cast Shadows unchecked, options like Raytracing, Smooth polygons, etc seem to work okay.  Just can't have shadows.

Now the $64 question is, why can't the Firefly engine render shadows properly with small objects?  A small object is really just a bunch of vertices close together (that's what makes the object small) so my guess is something happens when the geometry / polygons are scaled down beyond a certain point and Firefly can't properly figure out the shadows.   But why that is the case I've no idea.

I'd be curious to know what render settings Laurie normally uses, if she's using the default manual settings, that would explain why she never had this happen.

Good catch Les, another clue!

Les, just tried that but still got the weird shadows.  What Manual settings did you use?  Screen shot maybe?

Ironsoul, you might have hit on something.  I tried experimenting with using the alternate diffuse just now.  Here's what I did.

I applied the brush bristle texture map to both the diffuse and alternate diffuse nodes.  I reduced the strength of the basic diffuse down (this will need adjustment to balance the colors correctly but I was just experimenting here).

I left the handle its default basic color.  No maps used (just a simple MAT file with no extra nodes from Poser for a basic shiny green)

Then rendered.  Notice what has happened.  The brush portion has rendered somewhat correctly but lacks any shadowing, the handle is still in shadow.  However we still have the box shadow.  Also the after experimenting it seems the shadowing on the object isn't being applied so it comes out flat and almost monochromatic.

Not sure what this tells us other than Poser has difficulty rendering shadows for some small objects using depth shadows and normal diffuse textures, but not alternate diffuse.

I would really like to figure out why Laurie isn't having this problem.  Thanks for the info Laurie, sounds like we are both modeling in a simlar fashion (and for much the same reasons), with similar detail in vertices.  The above brush has 1002 vertices and 1020 quad polys.  The only place in the mesh that I would say is "dense" is on the handle where you see the sculpted bits, there are some loops of vertices there fairly close together for the detail.

I figured out a brilliant solution!  All I have to do now is convince everyone to scale up the default size of all their Poser content by 1000% and there we go.

Stop looking at me like that... ;-p

On a more serious note, I'm going to finish this shaving kit up and get it released soon, even with the odd rendering problem.  I'll include a note about it in the release so people who run into it will know what's going on and what to do about it.

I would still very much love to figure out what is really causing this.  What factors contribute to it so I'm hoping this thread will remain active.  As I have time I'll continue to experiment further.  I may also try other modelling software when possible just to see if this happens with any small OBJ regardless of what software created it or if some don't have that problem.   I think Laurie mentioned she'd never encountered it and uses Wings3D, so may investigate that (just bookmarked their webpage).

Laurie, could you tell me a little about the geometry of your meshes.  Specifically, how many vertices do they have on average, just a ballpark number.  How dense is the mesh?  I'm wondering if this might be caused by Poser not being able to handle too many vertices in a small geometry.  Just guessing really but since I can scale the very same object up in Poser and the problem suddenly stops it made me wonder about that.  What changes when you change the scale, the vertices move.  So that led me to wonder if too densely packed vertices in a small object might somehow cause it.

I also wondered about how the shadow resembled the bounding box / margin cage as its variously called.  So in Blender I experimented with resizing it.  I didn't expect that to eliminate the problem, but neither did it change the size of the shadow which I found odd.  Perhaps Poser redefines its own bounding box during import and sets the size?  Is there an error in the way it does that with small objects perhaps?  Not sure but just puzzling things out.  If I could pinpoint the cause it might be something SM could fix in a patch.

Tried that as well, did one with no mapped textures at all, just basic colors.  Same problem.

As I noted above, if you go to your lights and set them to raytraced shadows instead of depth cued, the problem disappears and the props render normally.  I have no idea why this is.  Nor why having a second object in the scene fixes it.

My two biggest concerns are this becoming a problem in anything I might do to sell in the future (I've got two furniture sets in the works now I was going to put in the marketplace here as my first entries).   Also, I don't like doing freebies that don't function 100% correctly, which is what I intend the shaving kit to be, a nice freebie.

Plus, not understanding why this happens, what causes it, etc. just plain annoys me.  I hate it when I can't figure something out.  LOL  

This shouldn't be a problem for freebies since I doubt anyone is going to be rendering a shaving brush or a straight razor entirely by itself... but still... it tasks me, it tasks me...

Normals okay.  No doubled vertices, etc.   So I went back and got the spline modifier used to lathe the brush.  Made a new bezier circle, scaled it down and applied the spline as a modifier and instant new brush at a much smaller size (and fewer polygons, just over 1k).  About 2x the intended size.  Converted to a mesh, exported from Blender, imported into Poser scaled down to 60% of imported size and.... same problem.  Put a prop next to it... proble goes away. 

o.O -_- O.-  Aaaaaaaaaaagh!

At moments like this I hate Poser.

Laurie, exporting from Poser and then importing it back still has the same problem.  Also have tried exporting from Blender and Poser as 3DS format and then converting back to OBJ and reimporting, same problem.

Tried exporting at 10x intended size, imported.  Renders okay until I scale it down to 10% (to make it appropriate size) and back to wonky shadows.

Even tried exporting in the original scale (no scaling) and then scaling down in Poser, no go.  BTW, original scale is giagantic in Poser, so I'm wondering if I just started way too big.  How much larger are your items in your modeling software vs final size?

Its got to be something to do with scaling, that seems to be the main variable.

Correct, they render find as long as there's a larger prop or figure in the scene.  By themselves you get the odd effect.   So this is not considered an issue for freebies or marketplace items?   I'd like to resolve it completely, I seem to have some other small props that don't do this, I'm not sure why they don't.

Trekkie, I had intended to release this set as a freebie soon as I get things sorted.  The set includes the brush, a shaving mug, a round puck of soap and a straight razor that opens and closes.  I had wanted to include a few different textures / MATs and displacement maps with it for some variety.

But I'd really like to get this sorted first.  I may try going back and rebuilding a single one of the meshes, but starting much smaller in Blender and see if that helps any.  It does seem to have something to do with scaling and I have figured out that the scaling info from its original size to whatever size I exported it is stored in the OBJ file somewhere.  So I'm wondering if Poser just can't handle all that scaling.  If the prop was just black that would be one thing, but those odd shadows seems like maybe the geometry has gone wonky somehow.

Fortunately you guys can't hear me cussing like a sailor over this, its been very frustrating!  LOL

Yup, I signed the petition.  Last I saw they had over 30,000 signatures.  There's been quite an ongoing protest in Adobe's forums but they don't seem to care.

I have GIMP installed and it does most of what Photoshop CS5.5 does, it just can't do the special effects in layers, nor can it work with 3D models for painting textures.  If I can find something to do those two things, I'm set. 

New brushes have to be added to PS.  You can put the new brush files (.abr) in any folder (I put mine in C:/Photoshop/Brushes/; which is NOT where I have photoshop installed, its just an easy folder for me to find) or you can put them in the photoshop folder, whichever you prefer.  Photoshop doesn't load them all, it loads a default set.

Select the brush tool, then go to the brush control panel and select Load Brushes in the upper right.  Load the brushes you want from whatever folder you put the new brushes in.  This will add the brushes to the end of the current set of brushes.

You can make your own sets of brushes so you can load just a certain kinds.  For example I've got about six different kinds of cloud brushes all loaded and saved as a Cloud set.  I can switch to just that set when I want to make clouds, makes them easier to find when you have a few hundred sets of brushes.

Or you can add ALL your brushes to the default set and photoshop will load them all when you start photoshop, but I don't recommend that.

Small update, Corel has announced a 10 year commitment to continue offering both in the box (perpetual license) versions of its products as well as subscription versions.  So while I have GIMP installed and am looking at it as I have time, I'm also going to be looking at Corel's software.  

Switching to Corel would be a bit ironic for me, since I started out many years ago using Paint Shop Pro which Corel now owns.  Life's funny sometimes.

From what I have seen so far, there are apps (including GIMP surprisingly to me) that offer many of the tools Photoshop does.  One of the main areas not duplicated were the 3D tools in Photoshop Extended, which was really useful for editing textures and eliminating seams.   However, that should continue to work in my copy of CS5 Ext regardless.

Also, I can continue using PS CS5 for some time to come, so there's not a rush in finding a replacement.

Thanks for all the links, and thanks for the blog lings Megalodon, interesting reading.

Yeah, I installed GIMP yesterday actually which is a bit ironic.   Couple of weeks ago a friend was asking me if I knew anything about GIMP and I'll admit I kind of snorted at it.  I mean, after all, I have Photoshop CS5 Ext....   So yeah, kind of ironic I'm now taking a serious look at GIMP myself.  Life's a funny thing sometimes.

Quote - Man, you need to read the EULA of your software - you only ever are buying the license to use the software...even your Poser software isn't your's.

Seriously, you're going to argue a symantec difference regarding buying a license?  Yeah, of course you don't own the copyright to the software itself... we all know that.