raytraced text doesn’t reflect light properly

[Walter Soyka]

[Jens Mock] “I encountered some inconsistencies how raytrace-3d letters reflect lights in my project; since I’m new to that I’m looking for some hints where to start looking”

Any time that I hear about weird single-frame anomalies like you’re describing here, the first thing I suggest is to clear your disk cache. On CS6, that’s in Preferences > Media & Disk Cache… “Clean Database & Cache.”

(BTW, if you haven’t installed all the updates to CS6, you should — there are a lot of bug fixes that include some cache errors.)

[Jens Mock] “Due to lack of DOF in raytrace-3d I precomposed each line and added a fast blur to the precomps to mimic that a little.”

DoF is supported in the ray-tracing renderer. Enable Depth of Field in your camera settings.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Jens Mock]

thanks for the hints but I think I can exclude the disk cache. I rendered the clip at a freshly started machine, pretty much unused for that day (this phenomenon occurs independently of day and workhours).

But the DoF can be sth. to look further. I’ve read somewhere (here) that it’s not supported but you’re right, I can switch it on/off – the ‘real’ reason I precomped everything was that when I had the DoF turned on, the plain textlines looked as if you blur a layer in photoshop and switch the layermode to ‘dissolve’ and set the transparency to sth. like 40% – far from anything useful :-/

maybe some details to the precomps:
within each of them I put the camera plus the two lights (plus text) so in the main comp they are not really necessary anymore (bit still there and turned on). I tested if it makes any difference if lights/camera in the mainComp are on or off, if it’s necessary that the preComps are 3d-layers (collapsed) or not and I tried what happened if everything is turned on – there are always blinking letters.

I will go for the updates and ask the administrator about that … (not the solution I hoped for)

[Jens Mock]

just a quick feedback how I managed to circumvent my problems:

the flickering lights were caused by the spotlight in the scene – by switching off ‘cast shadow’ this was resolved.
The other thing was the weird looking DoF – the problem was discussed on the Adobe forum and can be read here:
https://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/2-5192466-314377/450-197/blur.JPG

which in conclusion is caused by (the lack of power of) the graphic card.
there is no other way around NVIDIAs cuda-technology 😉

[Jens Mock]

just a quick feedback how I managed to circumvent my problems:

the flickering lights were caused by the spotlight in the scene – by switching off ‘cast shadow’ this was resolved.
The other thing was the weird looking DoF – the problem was discussed on the Adobe forum and can be read here:
https://forums.adobe.com/servlet/JiveServlet/downloadImage/2-5192466-314377/450-197/blur.JPG

which in conclusion is caused by (the lack of power of) the graphic card.
there is no other way around NVIDIAs cuda-technology 😉

and thanks for your feedback, Walter