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Rendering issue/Banding but not “banding”/Weird shadows+lights+3D layers bug
So, everything looks beautiful in my preview render, but rendering out to an Animation or ProRes (only two formats I’ve tried since I need this to composite into something else) gives this:
That’s from a 3D shape layer that’s inside of a precomp (also with it’s 3D switch activated) in my main comp. It’s being affected by a point light and an ambient light. The point light appears to be the culprit as it renders as one would expect when just the ambient light is in the scene. When I turn off shadows from the light, OR when I turn off cast shadows in the material properties of the shape layer, the banding-that-isn’t-banding disappears. This is also happening to some text layers (but not all) in my scene as well. Is this a problem anyone else has run into?
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6 Replies
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Do you have two 3D layers in the same position on the Zaxis? That tends to give this kind of result. If so, make sure to offset the a bit.
Also it would be useful to know details about your computer setup – graphic card, OS, and version of AE. Are you using the classic renderer or the 3d raytrace?Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
Nope, that’s the only 3D layer in the space. I’m working on a late 2011 MacBook Pro that has a AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 1024 MB of RAM. Latest OS, latest AE from a Creative Cloud subscription. Using the Classic 3D renderer because I need the matting in my final render. It’s just strange to me that my RAM previews look golden but the “actual” render is giving me this stuff. In certain sections it’s even worse:
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What are the project and export settings for bit depth? What is the bit depth of the point light effect?
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Same results whether I export with ProRes 4444 at 32 bits per channel or whether I export with h264 at 12000 Kbs and 8 bits. Not sure what you mean by the bit depth of the point light? Is there a way to set that somewhere?
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The shadow map resolution for a given composition are set to that composition’s size by default. When you preview the comp at a smaller size (Half resolution for example) you’ll have a smaller shadow map resolution. In your case it sounds like that is helping to hide the issue.
You can manually change the shadow map resolution in Composition Settings > Advanced > Renderer: Options…
Alternatively you might try moving your light so that the layer is pointing more directly at it.
Darby Edelen
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Thanks Darby! I’ll give both those issues a shot and see what happens. I was already changing the shadow map size when doing my test renders (same results) but didn’t check to see if that was affecting the preview window. In the meantime, I got around the issue by rendering shadows separately and compositing them later. Funny I didn’t even think of moving the light. I’ll give that a shot.
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