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By jgrant - 9 Years Ago
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Hi everyone,
Was futzing around with Christian and working on some key frame facial animation, basic moves, etc. and I seem to have a problem with 'boiling hair' once rendered as an MP4. If you look at the hed movement and the shadow interplay on the hairline, you can see distinct movement or flickering. Does this problem go away when rendered as an Image File Collection?
Here's the file for review and comment. Many thanks.
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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That's a shadow-map issue. Go into your "Visual/Shadows" and set the size to either 4096 or 512. Make sure "Soft Shadows is turned on and set to 3.
These are the two settings I have found most useful. The 512 with the super-soft gives gorgeous soft shadows, while the 4096 (also with soft at 3) gives crisp shadows without being pixelated looking.
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By jgrant - 9 Years Ago
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Thanks, Rampa. I greatly appreciate it. Is this common for all G6 Characters? Will I have to make the same adjustments with all CC characters? What hair supplier do you recommend for CC creations? Looking for short realistic hair, some manga-styled and other 'fun' toon styles for CC. I can only assume RL is coming out with a pack or ten 
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By jgrant - 9 Years Ago
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What I ended up doing was cranking up soft shadow to 3 as suggested and then going to 4k resolution but dropping opacity down as illustrated below. Am rendering out now as Image Sequence to test but it seems to be the answer. In your debt, as always .
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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It actually has nothing to do with the hair, per se (sic?). It's just a shadow thing, so everything is effected, not just hair.
You might want to set up a default scene with all settings like this optimized. When you everything optimized perfectly (yeah, right  ), then save your scene (project). When it appears in the Content Manager, right-click it on it and select "Make Default Project". Now iClone will always these settings for a new project.
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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And on a similar note... I'm seeing NO effect of the Shadow "Bias" adjustment in iC6 when I try to align my shadows cast from a Spotlight. Of course this works great in iC5 and I used it all the time to get shadows to "snug-up". Video Display drivers are up to date in case you're interested too!
I'm going to do a little video to show what's happening. Maybe I'm the only one with the issue but you never know. It's really ruining my renders in iC6.
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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mark (9/20/2015)
And on a similar note... I'm seeing NO effect of the Shadow "Bias" adjustment in iC6 when I try to align my shadows cast from a Spotlight. Of course this works great in iC5 and I used it all the time to get shadows to "snug-up". Video Display drivers are up to date in case you're interested too! I'm going to do a little video to show what's happening. Maybe I'm the only one with the issue but you never know. It's really ruining my renders in iC6.
Hmmm....... That is odd. No effect from bias, but the distance of the light from the subject plays a huge role. Seems to be in the 270's that it begins showing poor alignment. A smaller distance is much more accurate, regardless of the light's settings. Never open them up to wide either, of course, unless your after super fuzzed-out shadows from them. It'll also allow light pass-through if it's set beyond 160 degrees or so.
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By jgrant - 9 Years Ago
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Seems I may have opened up a barrel of monkeys or kettle of fish with this topic - but it's all for the good. Having accurate shadow work is essential of course and I'm surprised that this hasn't been talked about to death before. My apologies if this is a very old problem - but it's new to me in this format. Good to know about the accuracy when full wide and at a greater length. Here's the adjusted work I did and found no flicker and can remember to use this as a constant work around (it's not a bug, it's a feature) as I gear up for production.
Overall, I'm hoping that as IC6 matures, we will have a more accurate render engine to use?
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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Don't want to hijack your thread jgrant  but since we're talkin' about shadow issues I wanted to show mine as well...I guess I need to post in the iC6 issues thread too l. But I did promise a video explaining my problems...that said, this may have been mentioned before and it may be only my issue but it does ruin rendering in iC6 for me since I really use Spotlights more than Directional lights because they give me more control of the light and it's influence...
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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I think it's worth continuing the hijack, as the original inquiry was solved.
Mark, I've been fiddling with the spotlight shadows. The only time the shadow actually starts at absolute zeo is when the light is at absolute zero. It's already getting offset as soon as you move it. I figured this out using a 2D plane instead of a solid. The thicker the solid, the less noticeable because it takes more offset of the light from zero to see it. Zero being the object in questions position.
The kludgy-kludge fix for rectangular stuff is to use another rectangle offset from it a bit that actually is doing the shadow casting. Less than elegant, and only useful sometimes. You would only need such a thing at the base of any object, so it may actually be useful for shapes beyond rectangles as a shadow "filler".
It did lead to an interesting realization though. If it's a 2D plane with a single sided surface, it'll only cast shadow if its opaque surface is towards the light. It's invisible from the back side, so any 2D shape can cast a shadow while being invisible itself.
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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Thanks! The question for you is....is the "Shadow Bias" adjustment working in iC6 for you?
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By jgrant - 9 Years Ago
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Well worth the question (and NEVER EVER worry about 'hijacking' from me). As Rampa pointed out - I solved my problem and yours is one that I will encounter myself sooner or later and I am glad you posted this here. We need a FIX here I believe- and the BIAS adjustment seems the most obvious - but even that seems a little last century IMHO. Hopefully the RL Team can do a tweak on the next itiration.
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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I am also seeing no effect from the bias on spotlights. 
Stuck with workarounds, I guess. I'm guessing this is mostly an issue with building walls? As they are relatively thin. I guess it would effect things like hat brims though.
Use your spotlights in close. They do have the advantage that you can open them up really wide for crazy-soft shadows. That lets you have hard and soft shadows in the same scene.
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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Thanks again guys! So Bias Adjustment isn't working for you rampa?
My issue is I really need to be able to put my spotlight lights where I need them... to create the effect/mood I need ya know!
I've made so many compromises in iClone 6 already it's really beginning to wear me down I'm afraid....course I guess/hope it's just me and my system 
A working Bias adjustment would surely fix the shadow problem I'm having!
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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It's not your system at all Mark. That's how it is on mine as well. Jgrant?
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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Well as they say..."Misery loves company!" and I'm in good company!!! 
...yeah sorry I misread your post and see that it wasn't working for you as well!
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By jgrant - 9 Years Ago
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It's a bug. Doesn't work for me either. Probably a bit of code didn't get written. We should send a notice to developers and they will resolve. As we are delving into elements that are probably beyond the need of the casual user, this sort of operating 'fix' should be in the next update, IMHO. By the way, I am happy to answer to Julian or "Hey You" on occasion. Many thx.
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By Rampa - 9 Years Ago
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I'm kind of hoping that the title of this thread becomes a cooking show, or something.
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By mark - 9 Years Ago
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Well we are cooking with gas now...I've posted on the iC6 issues thread! Thanks for confirming this guys!!!
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