Note bottom right.

I'm getting these frequently. They are parallel marks, reasonably evenly spaced - little dashes, as it were.

I'm guessing they're not AO artifacts, as they stay consistently in the same place if I move the camera... but I'm not entirely sure if AO artifacts would do that. (?)

This example shows the effect under the jawline, but I frequently get the marks on the thighs. I think I've had them on the arms too.

It happens with different textures, and even with very high rendering quality.

Any ideas?

"Birth" marks ? :lol:

I do know they follow the mesh's poly lines, and are not related to groups side by side.. maybe Baggins Bill knows?

Mesh marks! wow.

I don't think I know enough to deduce how to fix that, or what would cause it.

Poser has a tendency to show little bits of the mesh when displacement maps are applied.
This was improved by the last SR, but it's still there in more subtle cases.  I don't know
if this is your problem, but it does look the same.....

Serious question ...

Are they still visible when you zoom out?

that sounds familiar...

Thanks, ockham... no displacement here, just bump.

Dr Geep, I seem to recall they are still visible with different levels of zoom. (Actually, you can see that from above, but I'll try from further back.) Would have to re-render to doublecheck... I'm in the middle of a render right now - just realized I didn't have raytrace shadows on my IBL. But as I'm seeing the render come out, that wasn't the source of this problem.

This wouldn't have anything to do with focal length, would it? hmm.

Focal length? ... No, it shouldn't but, with Poser, one never knows. :unsure:

I zoomed out a reasonable way (not so far that I'd have a hard time seeing the marks without upping the size of the render. The marks are still there.

Can you post an image, please?

Ambient Occlusion is not particularly camera dependent (or at least it shouldn't be).  The renderer examines each polygon's position in relation to other polygons, and basically darkens polygons that have other nearby polys that are not contiguous, or if contiguous, are not convex or planar, to that polygon.

Since in that area of the jawline, the geometry becomes concave, then yes it might be AO shading.  However it shouldn't show up as thin lines like that.  Some things to try:

Render with AO disabled, but raytracing on (if you're using raytraced shadows)
Render with AO enabled, but shadows off (to narrow down if it's AO or shadows)
Render with Smooth Polygons disabled
Render a version of that figure with no morphs applied (because that morph looks a bit odd to me)
Render a version of that figure with a minimal material, no bump/specular

also might want to see what Irradiance Caching value is set to, make it 90+ for better quality (not 100 exactly though).

"Birth" marks ?

LOL!

Bar Code!?!

Quote - "Birth" marks ?

LOL!

Bar Code!?!

Bar Code?  Perfeck !!!!!!!!!!!
But what happens when you scan it?

:lol:

Have you checked the  texture file against the UV Layout?

It is showing at a seam so it could be the texture doesn't  cover the layout completely at that point......I've done this when texturing and had very similar results.

Bar Code?  Perfeck !!!!!!!!!!!
But what happens when you scan it?

Automatic enrollment at Poser U!!!

Quote - Bar Code?  Perfeck !!!!!!!!!!!
But what happens when you scan it?

Automatic enrollment at Poser U!!!

Uh oh !!! :scared: ___ YAAAA !!!

Another possibility is running through my mind here...

You say that this happens with different textures, but presumably you are always using the same bump map.. the one you developed for this character?

The question is: do these artifacts disappear if you set her Face material bump value to zero? (one of pjz99's checks)

If they do disappear, I have a suggestion for you. If they don't, just ignore me.

 Actually it looks more like the template shining through on the texture. Is this a texture you've made yourself? It could be that the edges are blended and a LITTLE bit transparent, thus showing the underlying template (again if it's something you've made yourself)

It's IMO obviously some remnents from a template. If it's a bought texture there's something seriously wrong. If it's homemade, try making the template layer invisible (providing you still have the layered bersion available)

Shading rate number or AO setting  on the material may have something to do with it.

I have had these happen also and I didn't do any custome textures etc. Seems related to AO IIR.

Thanks for all the comments, folks!

1. Issue is not irradiance caching. All the test renders have been set at either 99 or 100.

2. I've tested with and without AO, with and without raytraced shadows.

3. It's not a homemade texture - well, it's a well-respected merchant resource texture (PureHot from DAZ - by Sarsa, I think) underneath, although that's well-disguised by my own work. The texture definitely covers all seams. In any case, I've had this with numerous unrelated textures.

4. The morph may look "odd" because it's a custom sculpt that is unfinished under the chin. But I get these issues, as I said, quite apart from this character, and in different parts of the body. (Right now I'm running a render with the morph at zero just to check.)

5. No, this isn't all happening with the same bump map - I was experiencing similar issues prior to working on this character, and the bump map here is completely custom.

I'll try setting the face material to zero on the bump and see what happens.

From what I recall, Irradiance Caching at 100 can actually produce artifacts, while 99 does not.  To me it really looks to be some problem with either shadowing or AO.  Be aware that Poser does not appear to handle raytraced shadows with Smooth Polygons correctly, it draws the shadows based on the un-smoothed geometry and can show this in odd ways, most notably when a lower poly profile casts a shadow that does not match the smoothed object that is casting it.

I've seen it with not textures applied, so it's not texture related.

Remove all nodes and textures and re render to see if you still see it. and someone call BB in here STAT!

Well, I zeroed the head morph and the next render was free of the marks.

Obviously, this is a problem as the character is dependent on the morph. I wonder if there is something in the way I saved the INJ that is causing the problem. (I did the sculpt on the full milwom obj, but I may have specified export to the head... wondering if that could cause some issues if I altered the neck zone when I did my sculpt.)

Still, this doesn't explain why I've had the issue before when I wasn't dealing with a sculpt.

I'm still experimenting with different renders... certainly, no problems show up in preview.

The other thing is that I've done a whole bunch of renders with this same head morph, and I never noticed any marks until this particular set....

I've imported a base mesh, rendered without textures and seen this issue before.

I tested it with bump off on face, head, and neck. Doesn't do the trick; still has the marks.

The only thing that's worked is omitting the morph.

I'm gonna try different lights next. I think that's when this started, the last time I switched lights.

Are you using BB's VSS... I think this is when I first noticed this issue.

Yes, I think I've got third-gen VSS on there. Other than bump, haven't tweaked a whole lot on that... my knowledge of nodes is such that any tweaking I do at this point probably wouldn't be an improvement.

Now that you mention it, though - I think I've only experienced this with VSS, as well.

:-

Getting rid of the VSS prop from the scene doesn't get rid of the problem, mind... must be some setting somewhere that's giving me grief.

The VSS prop being present in the scene has no impact. It's just data for VSS.

These are self-shadowing marks and are triggered by concave polygons. These can appear or be emphasized by morphs, bump maps, displacement maps, and smoothing.

The usual culprits are:

Too low ray bias on ray-traced lights. (These usually look light thin lines as you're getting.)
Too low ray bias on AO (but those usually look round)
Bump map used directly without subtracting .5

But you said you set bump to 0 which sort of disproves one possibility. Check the direcitonal light ray bias.

I have seen this before using certain custom morphs for V4. Sometimes V4 doesn't always take certain custom morphs well they will over stretch and tear V4's basic mesh and you don't always catch this until you have a very close up shot of the figure. As BB said you are most like seeing concave polys. I say this because in your previous posts when you set V4 back to her default head the line disappear.

Thanks.

I've tried this with depth-map shadows as well as raytraced lights, so not sure what to do.

I don't understand why the custom morph is doing this, there's nothing extreme. Not sure how to correct polygons that have become concave (which sounds like a bug in the renderer in any case). Hope I don't have to go back to the drawing board altogether with the morph. :-

Hm. I think for a lark I'm gonna see how this renders in DAZ Studio - see if its render engine generates the same artifacts as Firefly.

I sent up the batsignal for baggins bill.. I'm sure he'll have some inkling of whats going on.

Ah! I missed BB's post higher up!

He's already looked in - see three posts up from yours. :)

BB: How can you have a concave polygon, since there's no center point?

Go figure. No sign of the problem in DAZ Studio. (Click for full size.)

since its something odd with the poser rendering engine, that doesn't surprise me at all.

Concave can be easy in a four-sided polygon (quad) where you start with it flat and you raise two opposite corners.

Hmmm yeah I guess so.. I just couldn't picture it in my mind's eye.

Quote - Concave can be easy in a four-sided polygon (quad) where you start with it flat and you raise two opposite corners.

I guess I don't know how things work... but my assumption in that situation would be that a rendering engine would raise the whole polygon rather than have the middle sink.

That's obviously how the DS render engine works, and I would have thought it would be far less refined than Firefly. :-

Hmm actually poser smoothing would smooth that out, but maybe firefly doesn't always see smoothing properly?

The funny thing is that the actual rough parts of the morph are lower in the mesh.

Anyway... I have smoothing on. (Also have tried turning it off to see if that would fix the problem, but it doesn't.)

Very weird, and even more frustrating. Hard to believe I'm liking DS more than Poser Pro. But of course that doesn't work for a distributable character.

Quote -
but my assumption in that situation would be that a rendering engine would raise the whole polygon rather than have the middle sink.

Why would you assume that? This is a "saddle shape" and I can see a bunch of them on the crease where the neck joins the jaw, whether you morph or not. Any time you get longitudinal meridians forming a peak and latitudinal meridians forming a valley, you get a saddle shape. It's very common.

Poser generally handles these just fine. However, any time you deform them, either by displacement or even virtually deform them using bump, it gets a little squirrely. Also, I really haven't ever seen these except as shadow artifacts. Everything I've seen was related to shadows.

Have you been methodical? Like you haven't shown us step by step what you did and what you got, so I can't help.

If it were me, I'd go down to ONE infinite light with shadows off and render. Based on whether I see the artifact or not at that point, I'd make another decision.

(NOTE: EDITED FOR TYPOS)

Quote - I guess I don't know how things work... but my assumption in that situation would be that a rendering engine would raise the whole polygon rather than have the middle sink.

That's obviously how the DS render engine works, and I would have thought it would be far less refined than Firefly. :-

In either app, a quad polygon can be non-planar - if a quad polygon is not utterly flat, then it is non-planar, and will be either convex or concave.  D|S uses Catmull-Clark subdivision to obtain a polygon smoothing effect, while Poser uses Reyes rendering's micropolygon subdivision.  Both of these result in non-planar polygons practically everywhere.  And many of them will be concave :)  You may not have noticed it, but I encourage you to take a harder look, it's more obvious in a modeler.

To muddy the waters a little more, these polygons aren't REALLY concave or convex - those quads are cut internally into triangles, which can only ever be planar, at least in this universe.