Here's a subtle difference between the Firefly and newer Superfly renderers. I'd never bothered to try the new one until now; it turns out to help in this peculiar situation.

I'm doing my usual trick of setting up a complicated displacement map with a model, so the 'real' Poser model can be simpler. This is meant to be grooves for a record. There is NO LIGHT in the scene; the gray values are set by controlling the ambient value of the material with the P variable. Higher parts = lighter gray.

The upper render is Firefly, the lower is Superfly. Firefly created a moire pattern, just like you see on a real record. But I didn't want a moire here; I just wanted a plain replica of the groovy model. Superfly handled it better.

Hmm. The version with the moire would make a perfect warped record, wouldn't it? Think I'll try it.

Keep in mind that although Superfly is more accurate in rendering light and most textures it's primary shortcoming is that at this time it does not support microdisplacement effecting the mesh. The developers at Blender who incorporated cycles into their software and that is the core of superfly, are working on that feature. Please go through some of the threads we have on the differences between the two render engines. It could be a lot of fun.

Also, SuperFly does not do mesh smoothing.

@tonyvilters: Doesn't do smoothing...

Yeah, I noticed that later, and found a way to make Firefly render the pattern without the moire. Think I'll stick with FF after all.

I made a FireFly vinyl record shader in December 2015, but I can't locate the thread. I feel like it was a conversation on the now-lost runtimedna.com site. However, I did find the shader in my archives. If there's anything I can help with, let me know. I used the Poser Morphing Primitive "Lense" for the prop.

Is the world about to end?? There's a glaring error in your work- there are only five tracks on side 1 of Relics (well, on Starline and MFP pressings in the UK). Careful With Those Shaders, BB

@ypvs - you make a great point - I totally added the label AFTER i already did the groove layout. I should have counted the tracks.

That render was using FF. FF couldn't handle real grooves so the tracks are done with diffuse and anisotropic nodes.

Yesterday I tried doing it in SuperFly with actual grooves in the bump map (procedural of course - no way an image could deal with that level of detail) and simply made the entire surface uniformly do sharp reflections. No trickery. It came out much more interesting. There are some moire artifacts but I think I could fix those with a bit more randomness to the grooves.

bagginsbill posted at 12:34PM Fri, 23 June 2017 - #4305482

I made a FireFly vinyl record shader in December 2015, but I can't locate the thread. I feel like it was a conversation on the now-lost runtimedna.com site. However, I did find the shader in my archives. If there's anything I can help with, let me know. I used the Poser Morphing Primitive "Lense" for the prop.

Wow!!