Firefly less accurate with UVs than Superfly?

[Gadget Girl]

So I ran into something very frustrating the other day. I've been spending some time carefully adding some trim to an outfit I'm creating. Like a lot of time, because I wanted to keep the gold border on either side of it, but also ideally have it slightly smaller where the trim 'attaches' to the rest of the outfit.

So I was carefully linking things up along the template I had made (using the Export UV layout from Blender, this might be important) and after lots of tweaking and moving things over one or two pixels at a time, I had it, my vest looked the way I wanted. So I went on to work on textures on some other parts of the outfit. I hadn't at this point switched my render engine from Superfly to Firefly, because I'd really only been working on the image and bump maps, and had started dealing with other settings yet.

And then I did finally switch to Firefly and found my image maps didn't work at all. The first one is Superfly and second is Firefly:

You can see it mostly where the trim curves around the corners, but there's definite 'white' space from the image map showing up.

Which is really really really annoying! I do know a couple ways to fix it, probably I'll just do some cloning of the gold around the edges, but I thought I would post this as a warning to others.

And if you are interested, I had started with an extended area around the islands on the UV, because I know that you often do get white space if you make things match the islands exactly. But because I was lining things up very exactly, I wasn't really worried about that, just how it looked when I'd load the new image map into Poser.

I do kind of wonder if the reason that the UV was so accurate for Superfly is because I did make the UV in Blender, and Superfly is based off of cycles.

The lesson for next time is when doing this, use Firefly to test with, not Superfly.

 

[Glitterati3D]

The other thing is that it may just be your bump maps. Bumps set too high in Firefly will do all kinds of strange things, especially on edges like that.

I would be more prone to think bump map versus texture map there.

 

[jecnodde]

I agree with Glitterati - I think its the bump, try lowering the setting or just disconect it for testing

 

[Gadget Girl]

I would be more prone to think bump map versus texture map there.

I actually thought about that too. But with the bump map disconnected it looks the same (I may have turned my bump map down so low it wasn't making a difference).

I'm actually beginning to think that Poser is gas lighting me.

I went in to add more 'gold' around the edges of the trim and it didn't seem to make a difference, although it was hard to tell if that was because I'd ended up a bad edge when I'd tried to clone. I made several more adjustments, and as I started comparing between the two, suddenly the issue showed up in Superfly. Not only on the new iterations of the texture map, but when I'd go back in and load the original.

If I didn't have the renders I posted above to prove that they had looked different at one point, I would swear they never had. But I may have been wrong in saying that Superfly was more accurate, it had seemed like I could pretty much line things up exactly when I was working on the trim, but then I did this experiment.

I made a duplicate of the UV layout, and then filled the background with a bright obnoxious color and added that as the texture map. Again Superfly first then Firefly:

They are really really close, although it is obvious that the UV is shifted a bit to one side on both. But if you look carefully at the top corners of the front of the vest, they aren't the same. On the left side, the firefly version actually shows a more rounded corner and because of that more of the orange. I think there are some other differences to, but I wouldn't swear my eyes are calibrated enough to sure of them. For reference by the way, here's a screen shot of the actual geometry in Poser:

This may have something to do with me straightening out the UV, precisely to make it easier to add trim. But as you can see those upper corners of the vest are just that, corners, and not round. So Firefly seems to be 'bending' the UV in a different way than Superfly.

 

[Glitterati3D]

Well, what I see is that Firefly is rounding the corners and Superfly isn't. I would look at the smoothing settings on each render engine. Look at the Smooth Polygon settings on Both the object in your scene file and the smooth polygon settings in the render settings.

Are you using subdivision on one render engine and not the other perhaps?

Something is causing the rounded corners in Firefly on the OUTER edges.

 

[Gadget Girl]

No subdivision on at the moment. Actually this is a brand new scene, because the one I had posted the first pictures from, just seemed to be acting weirder and weirder. I double checked, but there was no sub-division on I had never really noticed that Smooth Polygons check box before. It was set to a crease angle of 80, so I unchecked the box, and re rendered. No difference at all.

Then another thought occurred to me. I closed Poser 11, and opened up Poser 2014 and loaded my vest and the texture map that shows the UV. Now in the preview mode, I get the sharp corners I'd expect, but once I render, the corners round again. Admittedly this was true of the Preview mode in Poser 11, but I really never know what to think of that preview mode since I don't know how much of firefly, and how much of superfly it's using.

Not that it should make the least bit of difference (in theory) but I think I'm going to restart my computer because sometimes I feel like even if I've quit and reopened Poser, it gathers 'junk' for lack of a better term that makes it misbehave.

 

[jecnodde]

Hmm remindes me of when I learned that if I use a texture, do some changes to it...Poser will still redner the texture before the changes. So now I rename my texture to something new after each change.

 

[Glitterati3D]

OK, here's one that is similar........I'm not seeing the differences, so it's something unique to your vest.

Firefly

Superfly

 

[Gadget Girl]

Hmm remindes me of when I learned that if I use a texture, do some changes to it...Poser will still redner the texture before the changes. So now I rename my texture to something new after each change.

Yes, I've learned that lesson too. Actually, it's possible that I did confuse myself somewhat in this way. I was very carefully 1 upping the names of my textures until I thought I was done, but once I found an issue again, it's possible I went in and reused a number, because I'd gotten rid of all the iterations.

OK, here's one that is similar........I'm not seeing the differences, so it's something unique to your vest.

It's completely possible it has to do with the vest, and possibly with something I did when I manually straightened the UV in Blender. However, the difference in what you posted and what I have, is that I have something I intended to be a hard corner, that firefly is trying to round.

I actually spend some time after you recommended the smooth polygon settings looking through the manual and reading up on how all this stuff works in Firefly. My conclusion was all the things I did to try and control how Firefly smoothed, didn't work. I had it off in the render settings, didn't have sub-D on. I even went and set up a smoothing ID for the non-trim area of the vest, because presumably if you have set a smoothing ID for one area, any area that doesn't have it won't be smoothed. But non of it made a difference.

I think I need to work on the texture map, because I think I'm getting that hard line partly because of how I cloned over the edge of the trim. I might be able to smudge it out, so that it doesn't show as a hard line.

 

[Satira Capriccio]

No need to change the texture name. When you make changes to a texture, reload textures (Render / Reload Textures) instead. I also switch between the Pose and Material rooms after clicking Reload Textures as that seems to help Poser realize I want textures reloaded.

 

[jecnodde]

Ohh that is good to know

 

[HaiGan]

I had never really noticed that Smooth Polygons check box before. It was set to a crease angle of 80, so I unchecked the box, and re rendered. No difference at all.

There are two paces where you can select to Smooth Polygons, at least there are in P11. One is in the object/prop properties but the other is in the Firefly render settings. The mention of crease angle makes me think you changed it in the object properties window but not the render settings window? Maybe I misread or missed something. Changing it in object properties seems to be separate to changing it in the render settings, at least going by the quick test I tried just now.

 

[Glitterati3D]

There are two paces where you can select to Smooth Polygons, at least there are in P11. One is in the object/prop properties but the other is in the Firefly render settings. The mention of crease angle makes me think you changed it in the object properties window but not the render settings window? Maybe I misread or missed something. Changing it in object properties seems to be separate to changing it in the render settings, at least going by the quick test I tried just now.

You are correct. And, I find that turning it off on the object properties (and ON in the render settings) solves most problems.

 

[Gadget Girl]

There are two paces where you can select to Smooth Polygons, at least there are in P11. One is in the object/prop properties but the other is in the Firefly render settings.

That seems to be what I found as well. I was trying to turn it off everywhere.

You are correct. And, I find that turning it off on the object properties (and ON in the render settings) solves most problems.

Hmmm, I think I tried that combination, mostly because I think I forgot until the end that you could set smoothing in render settings (in firefly I usually just set the various auto settings rather than tweak things manually) but I'm not sure. So I'll have to go back and try that.

 

[Glitterati3D]

That seems to be what I found as well. I was trying to turn it off everywhere.
Hmmm, I think I tried that combination, mostly because I think I forgot until the end that you could set smoothing in render settings (in firefly I usually just set the various auto settings rather than tweak things manually) but I'm not sure. So I'll have to go back and try that.

The other question that should have been asked up front is are you using Subdivision in Poser?

 

[Gadget Girl]

The other question that should have been asked up front is are you using Subdivision in Poser?

No in this case I'm not using sub division. I did experiment with turning it on, to see if it would make things better or worse, it didn't really seem to change how the UV was being bent on those corners.