I've noticed something a little odd with a prop I'm working on. It's a small prop - about the size of a Poser figure's hand, say, but quite detailed. When rendered in my default setup with a single infinite light, it renders completely black, as if it wasn't being lit at all. The strange thing is that if there is a single figure (not another prop) in the scene, even if my prop is nowhere near it and not parented to it, it renders fine.

A little investigation shows that the render is as expected if:

• the light is using raytrace shadows
• the light doesn't cast any shadows, or the shadow strength is turned down to about 75%
• or the object itself doesn't cast shadows
• any light other than an infinite light is used
• the prop is scaled up to about 150%

In other words, the problem only occurs if an infinite light is used with depth-mapped shadows (and the depth map size doesn't make any difference). This must be related to a combination of prop size and light shadowing, but I can't explain why. It's nothing to do with reversed normals, I've tried that.

Does anyone know why this happens and if so what to do about it? (Using Poser 6 SR2, the prop is built with Cinema 4D.)

Many thanks,
Steve

I tend to suspect that the shadow cameras may be the culprit here, but it's only a guess.

Thanks for the response. Could you elaborate a little though please - I'm not very familiar with the shadow cameras.

BTW, it's not only my prop - I've tried some small props by other people and the same thing happens if they are reduced in size a little.

I can't really say much more, shadow cameras are responsible for shadows in poser, so if something has no light on it then perhps that's becaus it is in shadow, and perhaps that's because there is a bug in the shadow cams in P6. This is just a wilde guess, and I may be totally wrong.

I'm sure you are on to something here. Looking through the shadow cam for this light, it sees nothing until I increase the prop scale to 140%, then all of a sudden it sees the prop - but only on render, not in preview. Spotlight shadow cams see the object at all scales, and in preview.

Definitely looks to me like a bug in P6 - I'll report it to e-Frontier.

Thanks for the pointer on this.

Attached Link: http://www.physicalc-software.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20

Thanks for the link. I went up to 1024 with the shadow maps - P6 won't let me go any higher than that. Any attempt to type in 2048 or higher simply snaps back to 1024.

Double click the dial and change the upper limit.

Ah, of course, of course! GOK why I forgot that. Many thanks.

Well, I went up to 4096 and still the same problem. (Tried 8192 but Poser fell over, so that's the limit for my system.)

Have you got Reuse Shadow Maps turned on? If so, remember to clear the old shadow map. Regardless, it sounds like it's more related to the absence of a main figure. Maybe load a figure and position it away from the view of the camera.

No, I don't have reuse maps turned on. I agree about the lack of a figure because including one solves the problem. But I don't understand why the absence of a figure makes any difference. Aren't figures and props treated the same as far as rendering is concerned?