Digital Art Zone

Something I’ve always been annoyed with in my Carrara animation renders is the way the shadows from hair, eyelashes but especially bump map texturing always presents an odd kind of pixelating effect.

Does anyone know what creates this and how to make it go away?

This first one has texturing on the character, and you can see how on the left cheek it’s really ugly and pixelating the way the light and shadows interact. (sorry it’s so short, I stopped working on it when I saw the effect).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xmq6a1yTq8&feature=plcp

In this render WIP you can see the pixelating is gone, but IMO the skin doesn’t look as good without the textures.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRCf7lGvtSg&feature=plcp

I’d like to keep the textures but have it so that the pixelating doesn’t occur so dramatically. Any suggestions?

Most of the properties are set to pretty decent levels, ambient occlusion, higher raytracing, etc.

Couple things: Is it possible to post a still image from your animation. Preferably where it looks the worst. It’s kind of hard to get a feel for what it is exactly that’s wrong. The other thing you could do that would be helpful is post a screen capture of your shader, particularly the bump channel.

I have a couple very generic questions and suggestions. Is the bump too visible, or sharp? Have you tried adjusting the bump intensity? If jaggies are the issue and you’re using an image map, try turning on interpolation, or making a higher resolution image map.

HI BC Rice

Just to add a couple more questions to Evil producers list.

Can you post a screen-shot of your rendering setting s for Anti-alias and Shadow accuracy.
also..

What type of shadowing are you using for the lights in your scene,.. Ray-trace or Shadow buffer.
and if it’s shadow buffer ,,what size of map.?

Just watched the clips,.. so,.. I think you mean the bump on he face in the first clip which is too high or a really rough bump map. which you seem to have adjusted down or removed in the second clip.

Q: What was the Bump map you were using,.. ?
Was it a skin bump map for a characters face, or something else.?

The actual shadow from her head on the uniform doesn’t have any jaggies, so I think the problem is just too high a value for the Bump on the face,..

Good thoughts 3dage. I thought about the AA settings after I posted, thinking the OP might have been getting the dreaded twinklies, but couldn’t really tell in the video.