Alpha problem with instances/proxies - any ideas?

[simmsimaging]

Having a problem with scattered vrayproxies of a mesh. See the screen shot of a rough render. Occasional versions of the wings of the bee are getting knocked out of the alpha for no reason, but they are also knocking out all the objects *behind them* too.

At first I thought it was a ForestPack Pro thing, but this is happening even when the proxies are converted to instances.

The basic proxies themselves seem to render fine though.

Anyone run into this before?

b

[gimiky]

typically i've seen this when dealing with transparent\refractive objects.. what is your "max transparency levels" value set to? try increasing it and/or the max depth value for reflection/refraction.

[simmsimaging]

I wondered about that too. I set max transparency at 50 (default) and bumped it to 100 without any change. The material values are 10/10. That doesn't seem to be the issue. The guys at Itoosoft are looking at the file in case it is specific to ForestPack, but it's really hard to say.

Weird anyway.

b

[vlado]

I can't think of a reason for that to happen right away; let me know if you find anything otherwise I will need some way to reproduce this here.

Best regards,
Vlado

[stef.thomas]

Does it do the same if you check "force 2-sided"? Could be to do with seeing the backside of a poly with no thickness.

[simmsimaging]

I still haven't figured it out. I rebuilt the Forest Pack Pro objects with the proxies in a new file and still no joy. Itoosoft is looking at the scene too, but no word back as of yet.

2-sided is on in the material, cutoff is .001 (just in case) and 'affect all channels' off or on for refraction makes no difference either. I can't see it being a simple material thing because it's the same material on all the bees and only some have the problem.

I say that, but actually a hi-res render I did last night is showing a bit of greyness in almost all of the white areas. Something is just not right in there. Probably me, but I can't figure it out.

[Itoosoft]

I think i have found the problem: "Reflect on back side" must be enabled for the wings material.

[simmsimaging]

Thanks Carlos! That definitely fixed the knocked out wings

Vlado: I don't think it should affect things that way should it?

It also did not remove the grey ghosted portions of the alpha so I guess that is a different issue. I tried a few options to get rid of that but can't seem to figure it out either.

[Morne]

you sure you dont have "affect alpha" checked by any chance on the reflection by accident instead of refraction?

[simmsimaging]

I've actually tried it off and on for refraction but it did not appear to make any difference. I will double check it again tomorrow though, it's certainly possible (even probable) that I screwed that up.

Thanks

/b