shadow from non-geometry?

[kolsen]

I using the ART renderer to render a car that came from Memento via FBX with the new Sun System. It comes out fine but one section of the car is in shadow. I add a photometric free light to fill in some of the darkness and I get a massive shadow-like dark area cast on the car even though there is no geometry between the free light and the car.  Any ideas? I can post pix later if you want to see this.

[Francisco_Penaloza]

Please do post screen captures of your scene and setting to debug your problem.

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @kolsen,

I've been trying to reproduce this problem but I cannot seem to do it.  Would it be possible to replace the car with a teapot and just attach those parts to a message?  I could also create a private folder if you'd like instead.  I just need a bit more to go on, I'm not getting this effect but likely I'm missing a key element.  Thanks!

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @kolsen,

I just wanted to follow up here, any thoughts on my previous post?  

Best Regards,

[kolsen]

Thanks for your help. I should have posted the file and a screen grab, but I just moved on to another project and now I'm swamped converting scenes to 2018 max. My latest attempts to duplicate the problem have been unsuccessful, fortunately.

I'm running Max on a BootCamp partition on an iMac, and on more than one occasion I've had weird viewport problems that may have something to do with the graphics card quirks.

If I can recreate the problem I'll post a pic. 

Thanks again.

[kolsen]

Thanks for your assistance. I've been converting files to 2018 and replacing mental ray materials with physical materials and have not been able to duplicate the problem, fortunately.  If it happens again I'll post a pic and the file. 

Cheers,

KO

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Ah ok, thanks for the update @kolsen.  If you were using GPU rendering you might run into issues... none of the Mac GPU's have passed certification testing in a few versions and are technically unsupported.  I'll still try to help if possible but there may not be anything that can be done there.  At least the problem is gone for now.  Thanks for the update again!

Best Regards,

[kolsen]

Oops. I did it again. I opened the max file, added a free light and a sunpositioner as you can see. the first render shows the dark spot where the free light should be adding light; then i move the free light over to the passenger side to see what happened and you can see the dark circle on the ground.  This is on a dell portable with an AMD Radeon R5 M335.  

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @kolsen,

Would it be possible to replace your car and ground with a plane and a teapot and attach the file for me please?  I'm not sure which setting might be causing it and it's easier to have a scene to look at than trying to replicate it.  Thanks very much if you can do that!

Best Regards,

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @kolsen,

I just wanted to follow up here, any thoughts on my previous post?

Best Regards,