Unseemly "Seams" - Genesis & Genesis 2

kakman

I am really having a difficult time with Genesis and Genesis 2 textures in C8.5, not just with “seams” but other issues as well.

The render below was created by:

Loading the Victoria 5 character (which I think sets the UV map to V5).
Apply the BTL-Gabi-V5 texture from the Carrara browser (this was part of the new 8.5 content).
Load V4 Basic Wear to cover up the “bits”.

There are white seams clearly visible on the thighs where the “torso” map meets the “limbs” map. There are also some seams on the shoulder and forearm areas.

The image was rendered at 1920x1080 with the default settings which include Object Accuracy set to 2 Pixels.

Please note that the further the character is from the camera the more pronounced the seams are (in extreme close-up they do not appear). In addition if I change the Object Accuracy to .5 Pixels the seams are less noticeable.

I have other issues and examples that I will post later on, but I wanted to get started with this with this simple example to see if:

Is it just me?
Is there some simple fix or adjustment?
Is there some basic premise I am missing here?
Or…..

Any help, guidance, information or instruction would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Edited to add:

Please "click" on the image to see it in full size to view the "seams"

kakman

Gensis 2 Gia - "out of the box".

Dartanbeck

Hmmmmm....

Kerya

In Dazstudio I would say set your shading rate in the render settings to 0.2 ...
I don't know Carrarasettings (trying to learn, that's why I am in this part of the forum)

Boojum the brown bunny

Hi there! I saw your problem and did some experimenting. The problem seems to be introduced by the Fast Mip Map Filtering of the shaders on Gabi. So after you load your shaders.

Go to each skin texture (hip, torso, leg, etc) and change the Source 1 Texture Map's filtering to Sampling instead of Fast Mip Map

The end result is no more lines.

Boojum the brown bunny

kakman

boojumbunn said:

Hi there! I saw your problem and did some experimenting. The problem seems to be introduced by the Fast Mip Map Filtering of the shaders on Gabi. So after you load your shaders.

Go to each skin texture (hip, torso, leg, etc) and change the Source 1 Texture Map's filtering to Sampling instead of Fast Mip Map

The end result is no more lines.

Boojum the brown bunny

Thank you so much for experimenting and isolating the cause of the “seams”. This is just another example of what makes this forum so great, there are so many knowledgeable and helpful members that are so generous with their time.

I agree that the issue is the Fast Mip Map filtering. I had first noticed this with the Genesis and Genesis 2 figures and thought it was related to those figures – it is NOT!

Because of your response I did some further experimenting of my own. While it is true that some textures are affected more than others, it does seem to impact ALL textures to some degree regardless of what the model is.

The impact is governed by the Render Size, the Object Accuracy settings and the distance an object is from the camera.

The loss of “detail” using the Fast Mip Map is stunning to me!

While it is not always easy to see on a computer monitor (but many times it is) all of my renders are for use on Blu-Ray discs to be displayed on very large High Definition flat screens. The loss of “detail” is really glaring in this situation even with objects way off in the distance.

I think that I will open a new thread regarding the difference between Fast Mip Map and Sampling filtering for textures in C8.5.

I am not sure if the Fast Mip Map is working properly in C8.5 or not. If this is the way it is supposed to work then it is not a bug I suppose.

With a large scene with a lot of objects it could literally take hours to go in and change the setting for every element of every shader for every object in a scene.

So, IMHO, if the Fast Mip Map is working correctly I think it is imperative that a feature be added to C8.5 to choose a default loading method for textures.

The example images below use a default scene with the Old Beach Pavilion rendered at 1280x720. The only difference is first image uses the Sampling and the second uses Fast Mip Map. Please click on the images to see in full size.

Boojum the brown bunny

The really weird question is, why did they choose fast mip map for their high quality textures in the first place? Elite Textures are supposed to be the best way to construct a quality shader. It's what the experts would use. So why would they ever sell carrara textures using Fast Mip Map? Now, because of how elite shaders are done, I have to go to every single shader region and manually change them.

Boojum the brown bunny

kakman

boojumbunn said:

The really weird question is, why did they choose fast mip map for their high quality textures in the first place? Elite Textures are supposed to be the best way to construct a quality shader. It's what the experts would use. So why would they ever sell carrara textures using Fast Mip Map? Now, because of how elite shaders are done, I have to go to every single shader region and manually change them.

Boojum the brown bunny

I know, it does seem really strange.

The amount of time required to change every element from Fast Mip Map to Sampling will result in hours and hours of work depending on the complexity of the scene.

I also posted this isuue in the “C9 feature request” thread but I am hoping that there will be some way to have an option to choose the default loading method for texture filtering between Sampling and Fast Mip Map sooner (and NOT DAZ soon) rather then later.

Without this ability I do not think I will be able to use C8.5 and thus all the new Genesis and Genesis 2 goodies.

And thank you, once again, for isolating this problem.

Madbat

I'm noticing a lot of really freakish results with eyes if you try morphing some of Rawarts characters, that only show up at render...eyelashes are not opened eyelids seem to be but the eyes render all bugged out. It all looks normal in preview, but the render itself looks bizarre.

SileneUK

I've beem reading every thread about glitches trying to find what is causing my problem(s). This is just one of them with C Pro 8.5. The image collage attached have numbers and relate to the following behaviours: My character is posed already, but it doesn't matter, she does all the following even if in the T position.

1) Made an older version of one of my Genesis characters and saved her to my browser This is how she looks in a screenshot of Assembe Room.

2 If I click on her head hair, this is how she looks in Model room with the guide hairs. Note face/body is normal. In the Texture room she looks normal too, but didn't make a screenshot. All texture maps are Sampling not Mip Maps.

3) Here she is rendered. All seems OK

NOW

4) I try several ways to get the new model from my browser under Objects into the Scene. No matter if I drag/drop, import, into the tree or into the scene, the whole scene blows apart as in screenshot 4.

5) After the blowout calms down, she appears in the scene. Here I have just moved her into position to sit on the rock Looks normal.

6) Now I go to Model to check hair and she now looks like a monkey face from Blender! And body is distorted.

7) In the Texture room she's still a monkey. All textures are correct and are as Samples not MipMaps which for a minute is what I thought might have happened when she travelled from browset object into the scene.

8) Here she is rendered... with monkey face and distorted limbs.

How do I make this stop? I put the other Genesis figures into my scene with no problem. Some I created whilst the scene was open. However I did save them as models to have for the future.

Sorry to be an annoying git, but I need to sort this scene by tomorrow. Should I unintall Pro 64 and go back to 8.5 32 which I can download? I can't go back to using 8.1 as there's no Genesis and I was having such good luck with Beta most of the time. I was OK with Pro 8.5 after I purchased it. Things started to go wrong, including crashing, after I got the new serial number to replace the expired one.

If it's me, please be frank and tell me what to do or to stop using the software if I am incompetent....or if I need to raise a ticket because it might be the software or get off my bum and fix it myself. HELP...am begging you here on my knees!

Cheers, SileneUK

SileneUK

Here's a closeup lightened of that number 8 render

Jonstark

Does this character have displacement maps? That last render screams displacement map malfunction at a casual glance.

I just saw a video of cripeman's that showed in passing how when exporting an obj that had a displacement map Carrara would actually convert the displacement map into real changes in the mesh, and when he imported his obj back in, it came in with many more vertexes and a changed mesh to match up to what the original displacement map effect was.

I'm wondering if (if there is a displacement map involved) in saving the Genesis to the object browser tray Carrara did something similar?

Sorry I can only guess, hopefully someone more expert will come along who can be more helpful.

Boojum the brown bunny

Actually, I have had a HUGE problem with import under Carrara 8.5. If I open a saved character like I was opening a scene then the character loads properly. But if I import the same character into an existing scene my morphs all get screwed up... as in most of them get undone. I have NO idea why this happens, but it's ticking me off because I normally create my character in one scene and then import it into my more complex scene.

Boojum the brown bunny

SileneUK

Jon.....I think you have it!

When I create the new model for the object browser, there is NO displacement. But when and however I bring it into an existing scene of other Genesis characters, a displacement - multiply shows up and I get the monkey shapes. See attached images Top is with displacement intruding into my object, and the bottom one is the way it is in the standalone and when I manually remove the effect whilst in the scene.

Is this the Master Shader bug? I thought that when you brought in a new character to a scene, it should be linked to its own shaders/textures that you made up for it in a location where you have decided the files should live and that the browser object car file just lives in the browser content folder in the programme file. I thought doing that would keep weird things from happening. But it seems the new character chases down the existing master shader and goes nuts.

My whole file has just seized up so I can't go back in yet. I have a folder for the skin textures for each character in the Scene's file location (documents) which has a folder, but something is obviously not working. I thought by doing that I was able to modify textures for each character (give 'em wrinkles etc) and they'd be unique as I give them a unique name as well. EG Not just use the master V5BreeHeadbM.jpg for a face skin, it has a personalised name, like Crona-Head.jpg

Sorry for rambling, but now that I know what is causing it, will try to faff around to be sure the shaders/textures are where and with what they are supposed to be.

To add to that...I just found since getting Pro 8.5, I have dozens of new parameters/morphs for Genesis figures. You'd think I'd be happy, but when I was trying to make a new old crone figure, as I had given up on trying to use this one, I was suddenly confronted with all these new morphs to use...some of which are different, others are similar to what I aleady had but with new names.

Thanks again Jon.... you are a star and Boojum, I am glad I'm not the only one who has these kinds of problems. Thank you both for reading and replying.

;) Cheers, SileneUK