The shooting target light effect in Artlantis

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

This is a classic that I had not been suffering lately and I can't remember what the fix is.

The attachment is a small size image test for a larger image. So if the problem goes away with more resolution everything is OK. But I can't remember if it was that, heliodon angle relative to surface and camera (heliodon is only light source here), reflectiveness, roughness, or what.

Thanks for any idea. I am having problems logging on to the Artlantis forum but I thought the reply would come faster and more precise over here anyway.

[Karl Ottenstein]

So many possibilities, and a little hard to tell from the small image.

Because the grass and pavement looks OK and only the walls are overexposed, it would seem that the over-exposed wall problem is not the heliodon.

(It does not look like you have radioisty from the sky enabled? Just the heliodon checked? Did you click the radiosity button to observe the updated preview window to make a rough guess for the proper settings? The wall on the right side, facing right, seems to be illuminated by radiosity, not the heliodon, considering the shadow angle of the trees...?)

I think the diffuse setting for the wall material may be too high? If you can get back on the artlantis forums, find the threads talking about glass that appears opaque white when rendered with radiosity - a specular / diffuse / roughness setting issue.

The above seems the most likely...unless somehow you have emission/neon enabled for the walls, which I doubt!

??

Karl

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Karl wrote:
So many possibilities, and a little hard to tell from the small image.

Sorry about the imprecise question also. The burnt out walls have to do with lighting (and I had never checked the 'diffuse' setting, so thanks for that), but my main concern in the picture (which I named the 'shooting target effect' mistakenly thinking everybody would immediately realise what I was talking about) are the McDonald's-like arches in the glass. I have had that with siding before, so it does not have to do with transparence (just to be sure I tried Transparent, Fresnel, Basic, different reflection settings, and the arches remain there).

The lighting angle seems to have something to do with the frequence and overall shape (circular, elliptic) of the ripple effect in the Preview window and low resolution renderings, but I guess it is some sort of pixelation effect of whatever algorithm Artlantis uses to calculate lighting meeting a modelled pattern with grooves/listels etc. only a few pixels wide.

I have tried a high resolution rendering and the effect remains. Agh.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Aha. Yeah, I figured you knew the answer to that one. Thanks for clarifying the question. 😉

What we are seeing looks like a moire effect. If the mullions of the glass are part of your material, then this explains it. The solution is to check the texture box under the advanced panel of the Shaders Inspector, and adjust the slider appropriately.

If the mullions are part of your AC model - and only the glass is glass 😉 then try selecting the mullion (divider) material and then move the smoothness slider further (all the way?) to the right in the advanced panel of the shaders inspector. If the glass is in front of the mullions [looks that way?] - then adjust its smoothness. [You can apply a ridiculous texture like brick temporarily to the glass to see if the smoothness setting makes a difference. If there is a smoothness problem, the brick will not be in a grid, but will be warped until the slider is moved appropriately.]

The image is so small, I can't tell which of the above applies.

(I see the Artlantis forums are unavailable again...)

Maybe one of the above, or both, will help.

Karl