Stonemason buildings, minor problem

[erik-nl]

Hi all,
My first message on this forum, I've been using Octane and the DAZ Studio plugin for a few weeks now and VERY pleased with the results so far.
Of course there are some quirks to get used to, and workarounds to learn about, but all in all I'm impressed with what can be done with this combo.

To be able to use Octane I've bought an MSI GTX770 with 4GB of VRAM, and it is downright stunning that scenes which require up to 20GB of RAM using DAZ Studio/Reality/LuxRender can be rendered using less than 4GB in Octane. The only drawback was the limited number of texture slots that forced me to remove some nice but unnecessary eye-candy like posters and graffiti from Stonemason's creations.

But I do have a problem that I would like to solve: triangle-shaped patterns on some of Stonemason's buildings that do not show up in LuxRender.
Could it be mis-oriented normals? Or the layered textures for the walls and windows?
Here's an example:



Any ideas anyone?
Cheers!

Erik

[glimpse]

Hi, Eric =)

do You have correct topology?..
switch info kernel & look to normals,
can't say for sure what's causing that
but very likelly it's geometry related.

P.S. Nice work &
Unlimitted textures are supported now =)

[erik-nl]

Hi Glimpse,
The strange thing is that in the geometric normals (or Interpolated Vertex Normals) view there is nothing of these triangle-patterns to be seen.
My 'gut feeling' tells me it could be sort of a texture/UV conflict because of the way those walls and windows are constructed.

From a recent screenshot uploaded by our 3rd model Terminator, I think he has the same Stonemason set, so if it is something particular to that Stonemason creation he probably would have noticed it, and hopefully knows what to do about it ; )

Erik

[erik-nl]

Here's the Geometric Normals view:



I can see nothing strange in it.
So where-oh-where do those triangles come from?

Erik

[SiliconAya]

I don't have these stonemason products (lots of others though), so I can't test it out, but have you double checked the bump maps settings/maps? That's about my only current suggestion.

[erik-nl]

Hi SA,
Having just started using Octane there's a good chance I did something wrong setting up those materials, no doubt about it!
But if I did, I just fail to understand why these triangles show up here.

Oh, I need to mention those buildings in the background are from Stonemason's 'Urban Sprawl 2' set, not from the much newer 'Abandoned City' like the buildings in the foreground, so T3 might not have those. They are building 3 and 11 from the US2 set.

Cheers!

Erik

[DrHemulen]

Load the model in a new session and try to strip the scene down to just one of the problem areas (delete everything else if possible) and look at it again. Autogenerate materials and see if the problem is still there, or if it's your own custom stuff (and/or weird bugs) causing the issue. If it persists, using the DAZ viewport with one of the modes that show the wireframe can sometimes be helpful to see areas with weird geometry.
Another option is to export to .obj and look at it with a modeling package to spot weird things like double faces or whatnot.

[Jazbee]

Have you tried changing the reyepsilon value? Not sure it that's the case, but I've had several situations where I could get rid of similar artifacts changing the rayepsilon (most often on large flat geometries). You just need to be careful, because if you go too far black tearing in geometry borders may start to appear.

[Isotemod]

Turn smooth off for the materials for these buildings.

[linvanchene]

edited and removed by user