Forum: Poser Technical


Subject: WTF?!? Weird blackouts...

_dodger opened this issue on Nov 29, 2002 ยท 12 posts


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 1:52 PM

Okay, I'm trying to upgrade my standard flame format with an InnerFire cone to make it renderable properly at above-angles. The cone is 12 vertices diameter and 4 vertices up and down for a grand total of 37 vertices. Simple enough, right? Except when I render it, this happens. Now I know that sometimes thin triangles (these aren't that thin, it's only 12 sides, which leaves them rather not-thin IMHO) will do this weird 'blackout' effect, though I have no clue why this ever happens. But here's the *really* annoying part -- why doesn't this happen with the default P4 cone prop? It has even more and thinner triangles in it and doesn't have this problem. Is there a fix (there has to be since the P4 cone works)? What is it? How do I avoid having to rebuild this from scratch? How do I avoid having to rebuild all 24 of my flicker MTs from scratch, too? This is bloody ridiculous.

_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 1:53 PM

Just as note -- if I trans-out the entire innerFire material with no_map and just set it 100% min 100% max falloff 0, the entire inner fire cone becomes invisble as it should EXCEPT for this part!


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 1:59 PM

If it helps, here's the UVmap of the mesh.

_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 2:00 PM

My bad, 49 vertices.


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 2:42 PM

Ahh, I fixed it. Seems Split Vertices in UVMapper took care of this.


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 2:44 PM


lesbentley posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 3:09 PM

The flame looks great.


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 5:05 PM

Yeah. Now I'm encountering problems with the gravity thing... wherein the JPs are acting really flaky with the point-at. I think I'm going to have to scratch the reversed polarity idea since this is done as a figure, not a floating prop. Instead I'll have to make an Anti-Gravity Well just the same but up in the sky at max distance. sigh


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 5:07 PM

Or maybe not. I got one working but it's not making the Gravity Well visible in the menu, like you were having the problem with. The one I hacked out of a PZ3 is the one that's acting flaky, the one I hacked together first, though, seems to work fine. Except the fact that the gravity well is not visible anywhere at all even in the menu. I'm way confused.


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 5:22 PM

Oh, weirdness. In the one where I didn't get it in the menu -- here's why... it wasn't there. I found the syntax error -- I closed the main block before I got to the doc{block which means it stopped reading. So the result was that it never loaded the Gravity Well. I was Pointing-At a nonexstient actor. But it was working. Som I'm a little bit weirded out by that...


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 5:34 PM

Okay I just tried something really weird and it seems to be working... I removed the Gravity_Well prop entirely and it didn't work. That makes sense. Here's what doesn't... I then replaced the Gravity_Well declaration but didnt' add the prop at all. So the mostly empty declaration at the top was there (with only the geomResource and the storageOffset), and the other part where you set all the channels -- that isn't there. It's working, mostly. However, on y rotation of the handle at certain angles it forces the flame into an angle (and thus the two spotlights that are part of it). This is getting very strange. It's 'pointing-at' a prop that doesn't exist and has no parametres at all except what geometry to use and the storage offset. As a result, that prop that it's pointing at isn't there but it's pointing at it anyway. It's not only not there, but in not being there it's not able to be located in any place within the UNIVERSE either... but somehow the flame is pointing at it. I wonder if this would work just the same without the reversed endpoint and stuff (or better)


_dodger posted Fri, 29 November 2002 at 6:26 PM

It's the spotlights. For some reason the spotlights are screwing up the joints.