I was hoping someone could help me with a problem that I am having making morphs for V4. here is my problem. I am using Poser 6 ,I am trying to make some morphs for the V4 body in Lightwave 9. I first tried this by loading the V4 obj file directly from the DAZ people folder/ geometries, I made the morph,saved it as an OBJ file by using the export OBJ /save in LW. This gave me an OBJ file containing the morph. But when I load V4 in poser and try to load the morph I get a message that " Target geometry has wrong number of vertices". So I tried it a different way.  I load my V4 Character in a zero pose from my figure Library, and export her to create an OBJ file. I then load this V4 OBJ into Lightwave,make my morph and save. But when I try to load this new morph back into the V4 character I get the same message. "Wrong number of vertices". I know not add or delete and points from the model in Lightwave when I make the morph. I have made MANY props and morphs to props with Lightwave and have NEVER encountered this problem before. I am missing something here. Or is it possible that the process of importing and exporting V4 is altering the point number or arrangement of the points. Here is a clue. I checked the number of points on the V4 model that I loaded into Lightwave before I made the morph. And than I checked the same model after I made the morph and saved it and reloaded it back into Lightwave. The statistics panel in LW was the same for both models 70,200 points. Can someone give me some insight into this problem please. Thanks

Hello I don't know if you are still having the problem with streaks on your renders. I too had black streaks on my renders mostly when I raytraced, Here is how I seem to have solved it. If you have been working with your scene for awile to get it just right by making a lot of test renders first. When you are all set up for a final render Just before you push your render button to start your final high quality render. Reload the textures, its at the top under render controls. It will take a minute for poser to reload all the textures. Than push render. This seems to have solved this perplexing problem for me. I tried many other things and found this by accident and it seems to work. Hope it helped

Hello RobynsVeil I saw your name and post here I have seen and used your outstanding products. I thought you could help me with my problem with V4 morphs. Here is my problem. I am using Poser 6 ,I am trying to make some morphs for the V4 body in Lightwave 9. I first tried this by loading the V4 obj file directly from the DAZ people folder/ geometries, I made the morph,saved it as an OBJ file by using the export OBJ /save in LW. This gave me an OBJ file containing the morph. But when I load V4 in poser and try to load the morph I get a message that " Target geometry has wrong number of vertices". So I tried it a different way.  I load my V4 Character in a zero pose from my figure Library, and export her to create an OBJ file. I then load this V4 OBJ into Lightwave,make my morph and save. But when I try to load this new morph back into the V4 character I get the same message. "Wrong number of vertices". I know not add or delete and points from the model in Lightwave when I make the morph. I have made MANY props and morphs to props with Lightwave and have NEVER encountered this problem before. I am missing something here. Or is it possible that the process of importing and exporting V4 is altering the point number or arrangement of the points. Here is a clue. I checked the number of points on the V4 model that I loaded into Lightwave before I made the morph. And than I checked the same model after I made the morph and saved it and reloaded it back into Lightwave. The statistics panel in LW was the same for both models 70,200 points. Can someone give me some insight into this problem please. Thanks

Replicand thanks for the explanation of bucket size. I found most of this by experience and trial and error.  Here is my question does your render dimension size have an effect on the quality or time to render. Of course I know that a very large render 4000x4 000 takes longer. But what I mean is would it make a difference if I used render dim. of 2048x2048 instead of 2000x2000. I used to render at dims such as 512x512 or 2048x2048 but started using 2000x2000 or 1500x1500 or whatever I wanted. What I do now if I want very high quality is render at the max size I can without a crash message and later reduce the image in Photshop to improve the quality. Example such as rendering at 2000x2000 and reducing to 1000x1000  in PS. The final image reduced image does appear less pixelated and smoother. Do you have any thoughts on this or if I am not doing this the best way or so. Thanks

LionheartM are you still making your movie? You didnt say how big you want your movie to be. There is a vast differance in render speed  between making it 300 x 300 pixels and 3000 x 3000. Pick a fairly small size that you can live with.   I understand that the movie takes place in a dimley lit room. Pay attention to your shadow settings. If your characters are dancing or spinning around in the room you may have shadows moving around in unpredictable and annoying ways. Are your characters throwing hard shadows onto a wall or floor? experiement with different shadow values and strengths. 3 minutes is a LOT of render time. 3 minutes at 30 frames per second is 5,400 frames! How much render time can you afford per frame?Some animators change this to 24 frames per second with no noticable loss. But if you started with 30 fps you will have to stay with it. If I may suggest, experiement  with small sections of your movie and see how it looks. Pick difficult sections with a lot of action and see what you get. I have been fooled many times by thinking that my motion looked very "Real" in my preview reneder. Only to find that it wasnt the  same when I increased to final render settings.  Say frame 50 -100 .   Then 200-250 ect. And see how your textures look and how the shadows look.  Experienment with a small number of frames for each of your different camara shots look. Animation and rendering is very time consuming be sure that it will look how you thought it would. I would suggest using maybe only 2 lights a direct overhead and maybe a spot front right and maybe a direct front left low values. And be carefull how the shadows from these lights interact with each other when your characters move or your camara moves. I would avoid Global illumination or ambient occlusion. unless you are sure how it will look and render and you have extra render time.    GOOD LUCK! and please post your movie for us to see.

Thanks for your comments Nigel.  I will try to find a recent render with streaks on it to show. But I was not aware of the size of the shadow map size and its affect on the artifacts . I have been setting all my shadow map sizes to 1024. You may ask why 1024? well I dont know 256 is the default size. I tried 512 then went to 1024. I tried 2048 and I could not see any difference with my eye. But there was a little bit longer render time. So I stuck with 1024. The same theory is true for my render sizes . I have a very fast computer now. So I have been trying to render at 3000 to 3500. Sometimes I get a message after the shadow maps have been calculated that " A problem has occured and a map cannot be read and  I should reduce the size or reduce the bucket size.   The default is 64 If I reduce the bucket size to 32 or maybe even 16 it will then render. I am going to experiment with the shadow map size and see if it reduces artifacts. But as I said I dont want to just increase  everything and just have overkill and longer renders with no visable differance in the quality of my renders. I am becoming convinced that most of the photo real looking renders I am seeing have more to do with materials and the newer V4 type models that are using very photo real texture maps and shaders. I think that some of the new Daz models look real even with the poser 3 light default setup. This was not  the case a few years ago. Thanks again

I agree with you Ashley. In our world there is really only one natural light source the sun.  This is the trick isnt it. To simulate the sun this one light source and all the scattered light. I have been finding that working  in the material room and changing materials and shaders can make or break a render. Thanks for all the good advise. Flyboy

Thank you Boni for your responce and suggestions. I have been trying your method and some variations of it. It is working well but as with all lighting set ups it all depends on your scene the mood of ithe scene. ect. What I have been doing is to create many many light sets and saving them to light library and then trying them out quickly when I set up a new render scene. This seemed like a quick way to find just the right lighting even if it will need some tweeking. I still dont comprehend all the settings associated with IBL. and AO especially the settings and bias ect. Poser manual does not explain any of this. Also I do a lot of animation with poser. I have been trying to save animation sets. Using the animation sets pallet, but it does not seem to save the animation sequences as I had thought that it would. Here again the manual does a very poor job of explaining this. But the animation pallet does work well. Do you have much experience with animation sets and saving them? Thanks Steve