I made a startling discovery today: I opened my scene first in 1.5.3 and then in 2.0.1, and in both cases rendered a preview.
in 1.5.3. all worked out nicely, in XSI 2.0.1: -lights are not able to cast shadows -transparencies cause dark alpha information, making it useless (no see through) -no GI or FG works.
I am really on the brink of canning the whole project: this is my set, with lots of detail and textures and 2 months of work. And now it all screws up.
I tried: new lights and cameras, no effect. merging into a new or working scene or other way round, no effect looking for anything in the render log, nothing trying almost every switch in the render options exporting the scene as .xsi , crashes
Why don't you output it in 1.5? Since you've done the scene in this version, is it indispensable that you bring it to version 2?
Anyway, I would do the following:
-Trying to create a new 2.01 scene and make tests. You created new lights and cameras, but have you tried to build a new scene from scratch? Also, I would create a new 1.53 scene with only cubes and spheres, one or two lights, and bring it to 2.01 and see what happens.
-Export the 1.53 models and import it as referenced models into a new 2.01 scene. You tried the .xsi export, but have you tried to export only objects or hierachies of objects? Maybe an object gets corrupted, and you have to track it down.
-Remove any GI/FG function, and reapply it. But before doing it I would create a new and simple 2.01 scene just to check if GI/FG actually renders. Also, I would try to remove the GI/FG functions in the 1.53 scene then reapply it in 2.01.
-As for the dark alpha, well I'm not sure I understand. Generally, alpha premultiplication causes your object to be darker (in the alpha) as they are transparent. Normally, only opaque objects should have a white alpha. Before version 2 I understand that there was a bug with alpha, so maybe now you do NOT experience this bug and it confuses you! Just speculating...
-On last resort, I would reinstall the software.
Hope this helps Salutations - Cheers Bernard Lebel
looks like I solved my problem: In my scene, I had a typewriter on a table, and it contained a primitive cylinder (wich I attached to the merged model later on in my room-scene), wich, upon deleting, resolved all those strange transparency-vs-alpha and no shadows/GI/FG-errors.
