Object Artifacts as a member of a population

Started by sonshine777, March 01, 2007, 04:42:07 PM

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sonshine777

Has anyone encountered the problem where an object placed in a scene as a single model renders out fine and the same model used in a population produces artifacts on every model? This can be illustrated in the image posted here. The middle Century Plant is the single model (created in Xfrog), the one to the left and all behind it are part of a population and all of them have a blowout around the blossoms. I have tried flipping the normals' and am not using the slope control for the distribution shader to no avail

Any ideas?
[attachimg=#]

bigben

#1
Check the "Render quality" settings in the population (not an available option with a single object). The default is medium quality. Try setting it to the maximum quality for a direct comparison.

Looking at your single object, it also appears that you have some surfacing artefacts in the flowers (the long, thin spikes). Check the internal network of the object and set all of the displacement values to 0 (or a really small number if you actually wanted displacement on a surface)

sonshine777

What you see in the single model is the little stems connecting each petal of the bloom, I think that is what is blowing out in the population. I am trying a toned down version tha replaces all of the petals with a single shape that is about the same size as each bloom. We'll see. :)

king_tiger_666

never had that problem with populations. does this happen with the free xfrog plants for you?, or just the century plant?

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sonshine777

Quote from: king_tiger_666 on March 01, 2007, 09:14:10 PM
never had that problem with populations. does this happen with the free xfrog plants for you?, or just the century plant?



So far just this plant it is one I created from scratch, I think I just got too fancy with the detail :)

king_tiger_666

could it be a texture/surface shader not functioning properly?

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bigben

That was the reasoning behind my suggestion to try setting all displacement settings to 0 in the objects internal network. I had a grass object do a similar thing... the landscape looked like an invasion of giant sea urchins.  If it works then it's a far simpler fix than reworking your object.

sonshine777

Quote from: bigben on March 01, 2007, 09:45:07 PM
That was the reasoning behind my suggestion to try setting all displacement settings to 0 in the objects internal network. I had a grass object do a similar thing... the landscape looked like an invasion of giant sea urchins.  If it works then it's a far simpler fix than reworking your object.

All displacements were at 0 in the internal network.

sonshine777

Quote from: king_tiger_666 on March 01, 2007, 09:29:58 PM
could it be a texture/surface shader not functioning properly?



The only texture is the bark on the stem, the leaves and blooms are just colors.

bigben

#9
A basic object in TGD will have at least a multi-shader and a default shader  i.e. at least one surface. Whether it's an image map or just a colour is irrelevant, it still has a surface, and displacement is a property of that surface. 

Here is a screengrab from a tree object of the default shader for the bark.  In this case the displacment is set to 0.01 (1cm). Some objects I've imported that displayed the same "sticks" as your render had a displacement of 1. Setting these to 0 fixed the problem.

Hope this helps.  :)

The white dots I suspect are a result of the render quality setting in the population. (second screen grab)

sonshine777

I have done everything you have just shown in the two screen shots with no change. If I could upload the model for you to try I would but it is 27Meg, a bit too big I think.

king_tiger_666

if you zip it, obj compress quite a bit, you could always email it if its under 20mb and you have fast interweb
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Oshyan

Ben has run through all of the troubleshooting options I would suggest. Did you try rendering at higher population detail? If none of that worked I suppose we'll have to wait and see if your object adjustments work, but ultimately there should be no problems rendering even complex objects in populations, so it's something we'll want to look at either way.

- Oshyan

king_tiger_666

i tried his tgo file and exported a obj version from xfrogs and both had the sample problem even on highest object quality...

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sonshine777

Quote from: king_tiger_666 on March 04, 2007, 06:02:20 PM
i tried his tgo file and exported a obj version from xfrogs and both had the sample problem even on highest object quality...



I am glad you got the files ok, I left to go to North Carolina on Saturday so I didn't have access to the e-mail address that I sent you the file from. I think the problem is in the XFrog file but still can't figure out why you can render the single object fine but not when it is populated. My demo version of Xfrog ran out so now I have to save up the money to buy it, before I can try fixing the plant. I have a render that is rendering now which has the "Dumbed down" version (I really cranked up the clouds so it has been Rendering since I left Saturday) My son will e-mail it to me and I hope to post it this week.