misty, to turn off IC in PP2012 or later, use D3D's Render Firefly script, or use render settings dialog and uncheck "Irradiance Caching".  whilst this requires knowledge of various other settings, in simple terms: no IC = no problems.

i actually render with my Irradiance cache at 100%.

unless there's 2 different Irradiance options

Quote - i actually render with my Irradiance cache at 100%.

unless there's 2 different Irradiance options

Turn IC off, or very low for better results.  100% is way too much, and isn't going to be accurate for interior renders.

Quote - trying to figure out how BB knew how many inches was his slab

I constructed it procedurally using a Python script. I used the official poser inch where 1 PNU = 103.2 inches.

would this kinda explain the nostril glow we sometimes experience?

i was just reading something in the ds forums about single sided and right angles.  issue doesn't seem specific to firefly.

Nostril glow is the result of setting up shadows to miss something as small as a nostril.

This can multiple ways, but the two most common being:

1. Depth-mapped shadows, plus a small shadow map dimension, plus a lot of scene to cover with the shadow map.

2. Depth-mapped or raytraced shadows, plus having your shadow min bias too high.

As always, if you want to know something about topic X, go to rendo search, enter X in the search text, enter "bagginsbill" in the field to search for a specific user. Example results:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=2765271&ebot_calc_page#message_2765271

Which will take you to two more posts by me on the subject.

Or

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2753785&page=30#message_3405687

There are more - probably hundreds by now. It is an eternal topic I guess.

Quote - i was just reading something in the ds forums about single sided and right angles.  issue doesn't seem specific to firefly.

"Light leaks" are not something specific to Firefly.  It's a complex problem of inaccurate models, algorithms, and a bunch of different factors specific to "global illumination", or bouncing light, throughout a virtual scene.  The problem is that Poser and D|S are just now just adopting features that the rest of the 3D world has been using for many years.  Not all of the content that has previously been created to work with Poser's older features are prepared properly to handle these newer, more advanced features.  Many models for Poser and D|S contain no volume (non-manifold, single-sided goemetry), and have other issues that weren't considered a problem when we weren't able to bounce light around our scenes.

@ BB hope you write that book before I'm too old to understand it ;-)

@MLP Dr Geep has a ruler (caliper) in one of his tuts , make some scaled cubes in poser ~ export as obj, then import to wings as size guides when you have a couple (eg 1 inch an 1 foot) then set your guides in wings (sure you have them but I dont use wings now)

have to say its a lot easier to use metric ;-) point 1 of a foot is hard math :-(