Light Blocking Issue

[ghandi666]

hello. i hope someone on the boards can help me.

i can't seem to stop light rays from penetrating a particular piece of geometry.
here's a pic:

http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/1605/ex...escreenyqo0.jpg

notice the bright reflection in the corner of his left eye (well, both eyes really). that should not be there. that light should be blocked by the head geometry.

i've got two miss fast skin textures applied to the head, one for the face and one for the bandages. both share the same mr_material and lightmap. the inner and outer eyes are maya blinns.

i've got one bright light coming from behind the character, over his right shoulder, plus a key and a fill light in front of him. the culprit is the bright light, but the head geometry should completely block those light rays. i mean, the way the scene is set up, no bright light should be hitting the outer eye at all.

as far as the geometry itself, the only unorthodox thing about the model is that the head geometry is separate from the body geometry. they are two open and separate pieces, no verts were welded. i've scaled and pulled back the verts behind his eyes, but no joy.

by the way, this image was rendered with fg but no gi.

i'm sure there is a simple solution. anyone?

[gmask]

is that particular piece of geometry casting shadows? If not then this behavior is to be expected.

[ghandi666]

yup. definitely casting shadows. i thought that might have something to do with it, so i tried cast shadows/notcast shadows, receive shadows/not receive shadows, single-sided, double-sided, polygon culling. no luck. thanks for the quick reply.

[gmask]

is a reflection or specular? If the eyes are actually two pieces of geometry the bright area could be from reflections bouncing around and blowing out between the two.

[ghandi666]

that is a possibility. i'll run some tests and let you know. good ides! thanks.

[ghandi666]

you put me on the right track. i was so concerned about light passing through the head geometry that i wasn't paying attention to the eyeball geometry. (i did the initial modeling and texturing on this character months ago)
for some reason i had turned off receive shadows for both the inner- and outer-eye geometry. that was the issue.
thank you very much for your help.