Bad grey staircase rendering of 3D objects

I am fighting with a problem occasioning bad shadow rendering with 3D objects.


My project is fairly big and contains many Groups of many 3D objects, most of them created with Fox’s famous ZZSC Basis Shapes coma, colon or whatever convenient shape character. Everything ok so far. Tx to Fox's hep.


The trouble comes with the rendering of some of these objects, after disabling all other objects.


It seems the Light parameter is the trouble maker, since I disabled all of the rendering parameters Shadow, Reflection, Depth of Field, Motion Blur, Field Rendering and Frame Blending, and still get ugly grey staircases all over.


I just kept the Lighting parameter on, and I still get the trouble, ie. Square black/grey blob quickening rearranging themselves with my camera movement. That makes the picture unusable of course.


Adding some mild light object makes the trouble somehow better but still not well enough.


My question is, how can  deal with this bad rendering problem?


Motion 5.9, project 60 fps, 600 frames.

--

Claude

Mac mini, macOS 15.3

Posted on Mar 10, 2025 11:37 AM

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Mar 11, 2025 4:31 PM in response to claude_210

Ok - I got the link.


As near as I can tell, the problem is that the ; character 3D Text > Depth is 0. Set that to 1 or greater. (I did not get the checkerboard pattern, but I did get some very noisy shading. Setting the Depth greater than 0 solved it.)


I'd also recommend setting the Environment > Type to Light Box and the Intensity to about 240.



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Mar 10, 2025 11:59 PM in response to fox_m

Hi Fox, Here is an excerpt of my project. Downsized to just a few layers, I still get the "staircase effect" rendering of the WIDE FRAME. Notice it disappears (as well as the ambient light) when I remove the BACK WALL COMPOUND which made me think it is a reflected light problem or misadjustment...


Nevertheless, I have no idea how to solve this.

Br


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Mar 10, 2025 3:00 PM in response to claude_210

Could you provide a screen shot of what you're seeing?


One thing you have to look out for when working with 3D Text objects is filters/effects that "rasterize", so a screen shot of your layers list (expanded) as well, if you can.


I'll see if I can replicate the problem.

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Bad grey staircase rendering of 3D objects

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