Matte Shadow Fringe Problem

Mike,

I thought it might be a pre-multiplied alpha issue but I tried it both ways 
and still could not get the fringe.

Some additional info: I did not Net-render, and I did turn on the render 
window.

I don't think the render window should affect it, but perhaps the net-render 
(?).


TimW

Department of Visual Arts, University of Dayton
http://www.udayton.edu/
Dell Optiplex 260: P4 3.06Ghz, 1gb, W2K SP4, ATI Radeon 7000. Max: 3.1, 4.26, 
5.1 SP1, 6.0 SP1, 7.0/7.5 SP1, 8.0 

Seems some complicated lightsetup you have here ( negative lights etc...)

generally speaking i would turn up the quality of the area lights (light 
rollout) - try render the scene against a white floor - you will not longer 
wonder why the poor standard matte material gets some problem ;-)

further testing showed me:

* if i turn OFF Max's antialiasing in the render rollout, the fringe does not 
show - so it got something to do with it - testing several different 
filters
did not help - so it might be a problem of the matte material itself, when it 
does the shadow-compositing internally

* next i used the good freeware "Shadow/Matte 2" plugin 
( get it here http://www.maxplugins.de/r6_files/burnett/Matte2_R6.zip, copy 
it to your plugin-folder) and apply it to your floor object 
("Matte/Shadow2"), turn on "recieve shadows" and
"affect alpha" and render
voila ! fringing is GONE !!!


UPDATE:
Blurstudio released some cool freeware Matte plugin that works too 
get it here http://www.blur.com/Tech/zip/blurmatte.zip

Note: i noted some differences in the alpha-rendering from std matte versus 
the third party mattes, maybe some more tweaking is needed to get the same 
results...

;-)

So ..... with Max 9 we will maybe loose this plugin cause nobody will compile 
it ? (footools /John Burnett's website is offline....)
THIS is exactly why i hate breaking plugins, with Max updates ;-)

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