How do you get rid of lit nostrils and mouths?

velomobiler

Okay, once and for all... How do you get rid of the "lit nostril" effect and "lit mouth" effect? In all my renders, it looks like tiny spelunkers (cave explorers) have their lights inside the nostrils and open mouths of the characters. The only way I have found to get rid of them is applying "deep shadow map" to EVERY light... which is not too practical if you have, like, half a million lights as part of a sky dome or something. (And in some cases, one does NOT want deep shadow map, like for bluish-gray ambient lights, or similar.)

The other method I use to get rid of it is simply to load the rendered picture into an image editor (like Gimp, Corel Paint, etc) and go around to each and every character and carefully, discreetly darken all their nostrils and open mouths. But that is very tedious and time-consuming, especially if I am rendering a long series of pictures as for a comic, or highly illustrated novel or something. (And sometimes I forget to do it! Oops! :roll: )

I do not see lit nostrils in any promo image (well... actually I have... but only on real old promo images, like products for V1 and V2... WAY back when), and most other people's renders. (Sometimes I see them on Deviant Art, where less than highly experienced artists (like myself) display their stuff.) So...

HOW DO YOU GET RID of that effect in a more elegant, less jack-booted way? :roll: :ohh: :-) ?

Richard Haseltine

If your lights don't cast shadows then they will affect the inside of cavities. If you are using multiple lights to fake ambient light, consider using a real ambient light with occlusion - uberEnvironment or Age of Armour's Advanced Ambient Light in DS for example - which can be given a low trace distance so that they shadow small opening like the nose and mouth without stretching too far. You can also try lowering the diffuse strength of the interior surfaces so that they take less light, but to do that well you would probably need to use a map on Diffuse strength that was lighter near the opening and darkened as the surfaces pulled into the shadows.

velomobiler

Thank you! Thank you! Yes, I tried those products. Should have thought of that before. Thank you for all the advice!

(Also, sorry it took so long to reply; I was out of town a week or so.)

zug22

Although Richard's reply is certainly a better approach (one which I am now trying out for myself) I have been doing something much simpler up until now: go into each character's surfaces and darken the gums, inner mouth, teeth and tongue. usually the teeth need be darkened only a lttle but the others I darken the diffuse and specular colour (not changing the texture) to a greyish tone and that does it. Just in case you need it.

Ostadan

You can also try a point light with a negative intensity sitting in the area you want to darken.