I’ve got smoke in my scene. The domain is along the blade of the sword and things behind this domain don’t render properly. You can see the brighter purple of the sky where it changes. I used to have stars turned on and they would only render where the sky is darker, but not behind the domain. You can also see that the normal map that I have on the floor isn’t rendering properly on the other side of the sword (behind the domain). And there’s a black spot underneath the sword where the domain box is (the base isn’t intersecting with anything). It seems like raytracing isn’t going through the domain, but I’m not sure why. Traceable is on for the domain, and I can turn it off, but that doesn’t change anything. Also tried “receive transparent” on everything that made sense… and didn’t; no change.
Okay, then… why can’t you approach the two problems separately?
The very presence of “smoke” might well call into serious question the idea of using “ray tracing” altogether … will this computationally intensive technique actually produce a visible benefit in this situation, i.e. once the smoke is applied?
Then… “smoke does-its-thing to anything, whether that ‘anything’ was razor-sharp (initially…) or not.” So, the effect of smoke can certainly be dealt with in compositing. It need not be a concern in the initial render.
That’s an excellent point. That’s certainly a good fix for this problem. There are, however, two considerations:
I think you’re asking if turning off ray tracing is really all that detrimental. It’s true that zbuffer effects and such will probably do just fine, but I don’t know for certain that this is what’s happening. It looks like raytracing is being blocked, but the problem with the normal map seems to indicate something a little bigger. It also sounds like you’re suggesting that the very high precision of ray-tracing is lost behind the “noise” of the smoke. This is true, but precision is not the only thing that I’m losing. I’m also losing stars, normal maps and shadows (the black rectangle is underneath the sword regardless of what kind of lights I use).
Compositing the smoke is a good work-around, but it’s not a solution. Especially because this is a pet project (i.e. no deadline) I would really rather know what’s going on here. If I know that it’s a bug, then I can work around it until another version is released. There are few things that are more beautiful than a truly good hack or work-around. If, however, it’s the result of me doing something wrong, then I’d rather do it right than make a hack that I don’t have to make. There are few things more obnoxious than a hack that demonstrates my incompetence
I truly appreciate your answer. It’s a straightforward and success-oriented method. Unfortunately, you’ve run into a Hurley. My brothers and I are the type of people who must know “why.” It helps us understand similar problems in the future (where the work-around doesn’t work) and keeps our brains from exploding