Are you sure that you do not have multiple identical pieces stacked on top of each other? I never ever had this issue in the 7 years I used Blender and it never happened either on the 60k images rendered by the online mode.

Hi Scrubs, No, definitely no duplicate pieces, That was the first thing I checked for.

Not sure if I am correct but it SEEMS like its whenever I re-use a scene, and i change the image texture (Using image sequences of the minifigures faces for lipsync) I do not recall it happening when doing the first rendering of a scene. Always changing the image file, never overlaying it or anything wierd like that. It seems totally random.

I will have a character in a scene who will render out perfectly using one set of face images, then sometimes when I reuse the same file and change the image sequence to a new set, it seems to come up with these strange black lines but only on that one character, and any other characters in that scene are uneffected.

It has happened now on two different projects and on 3 specific characters so its not all the characters but always on the image textured parts, especially the faces. Then it will only be say 3 frames out of 400 renders so its not even consistent. If I re-render the same frames on their own, I still get the same marks.

I have done everything I can thing of to make sure there is nothing wrong with the meshes, have done all the usual check for duplicates etc. Double check and triple check that the fault is not in the image file, tried changing the HDRI file, but nothing seems to make the problem go away for that specific frame.

I will remember to save an image next time it happens. I normally have to take them into Photoshop and try and touch the problem up so have not got any of the original problem images left.

I put it down to an idiosyncrasy of Blender and just put up with the few times it has happened.

That said, I have not had the problem for the past few months now and I am averaging 60 odd renders a day with my new project but I am using mostly Blender 2.8 now but the project is still young.

Maybe you want to try updating your version of Blender 2.8?

So, this is what it looks like, straight out of the gate with the Minifigure Model I purchased from the Mecabricks Store:

It's FAR less noticeable than when with my decals and with the lamps still on. The lines show up much more when it's white. But you can see that there's this weird square patch on the face, and, if you zoom in, the vertical stripes are still on the torso. But this is, again, directly rendering the untouched default .blend file.

You can see the vertical stripes/face block artifact a little better when I remove the lamps and instead just used the sun.

I did notice that if I disconnected the "Volume node", the lines on the shirt disappeared, but there's still a darkened square in the face.

And here's that with the "Volume" node disconnected and the lamps removed (stripes are gone, but the face block still remains).

Again, this is done straight from the file downloaded from Mecabricks, just opened in 2.8 (the version I have that's compatible with all of my plugins was downloaded on March 23rd, but I've tried it on newer versions with the same result). No changes to the camera, render size, sample size, HDRI or adding any image textures, just the immediate render in Cycles (I obviously did mess with disabling some lights and disconnecting some nodes for the later images).

For what it's worth, this is what it looks like when the default model has my custom image textures attached (lamps are still also off)

And when the model has the Volume node disconnected:

Oddly enough, I tried out 2.77 and 2.79b versions of Blender, rendering the raw file, and they also gave me a lot of the same "stripe" artifacts, but not as noticeable? I'm honestly not quite sure what's going on. I paid for the model, and I've used it a good while for literally hundreds of renders! It was well worth the cost, and it wasn't until recently that these problems started happening,. But it's rough because it's legitimately effecting my renders and my animation quality. If there's anything you guys could do about this, or a solution you have in place, I'd greatly appreciate it!

That is interesting. Could you open another thread to discuss this issue as the minifigure is separate from the Advanced Add-on?

Edit: After a quick check, the issue seems to come from the volume node that shall not have any impact but does. Just keep the node disconnected. It is only useful if the base material is transparent. This issue doesn't happen with the add-on as the volume node is only connected if the decorated material as a transparent base.

For the "square" on the face, that is totally normal. It comes from the reflection of the backdrop. Disable it and it will disappear.

Updated to revision 2.0.1

Updated to revision 2.0.2

Hi Scrubs. Could the new advanced shader be causing issues with image textures?

I am all of a sudden having issues I've not had before.

I have just imported a small model with some minifigures with image textures as a Mecabrick zmbx file into blender using Eevee and for some reason as soon as I select an image texture the CPU usage goes up to 55 - 70% for around 30 seconds and blender stops reacting for that time.

After 30 odd seconds the CPU useage goes back to 6% and its all fine until I try and do something to the image.

Once the CPU useage goes back to its normal level then you can work again, anything done on the menu such as selecting alpha blend POW 55 - 70% CPU, then after its returned to normal, click on the box to deselect "show back face" and it goes off and does the same thing again.

If I select any of the normal blocks I don't have an issue, just those with image textures.

I am using 35% of my memory (20 Gig) the hard drive usage does not change significantly. I am using the latest version of Blender 2.8

If I change the texture node to a Principled BSDF with image texture then it behaves normally.

This is a model I down loaded this morning, about 100 pieces in total so not one of my usual huge models. I have updated to the new V2.0.3 Advanced shader. I have even tried going back as far as V2.0.1 to see if that made any difference.

I have tried it now on 2 different computers and getting the same problem on both.

On initial Import, all the image textures are Pink.

Any Ideas?

I have tried out a second model and have the same issues.

It appears, when I go into the MB:Decoration file, that I can see the expected icon of the texture, but the texture itself does not seem to unpack. Normally when you select the image, it unpacks it into the texture sub-directory. I can get one image to unpack then nothing after that. Not sure if thats just an anomaly of the way Eevee works or not.

If I change to Principled BSDF, and select the image file (i.e. MB:texture.png.006) in the "browse images to be linked" then I can get the image to be displayed even though its not unpacked. It also does not freeze up once I have done that.

This add-on is designed for Cycles. Eevee is not supported even if it may work with some models and hardware configurations. The decoration material is definitely not adapted for Eevee. It is too complex to be compiled as this is a combination of all the other materials.

Are there any render farms that work with this addon?

Noticed something odd (but expected I suppose) - part 99780 (inverted 1x2 bracket) breaks when importing a ZMBX with physical bevels enabled. Is this just due to the complexity of that part? Example below:

The add-on has been updated to revision 2.0.4

The main new feature is the possibility to have high-resolution part packs.
Enter the location of the root folder where the packs are stored and the add-on will automatically do everything for you when you import a model from Mecabricks. The first pack available is for minifigures.

Can we make our own packs for the advanced add add-on?

Ultimately you could.

Okay! 😃 Would I just set the directory to be one of my bendy packages for it to work? Or would I need to do some additional rewiring?

Hi everyone! Just been rendering with the advanced script recently and found that the render times are very high. I'm talking 64 samples at HD taking 2 hours. I'm not very technical at all so I was wondering is there is a way to optimise my scenes?

I can include blend files if that could help. I do have a 2013 MacBook i5 8gb ram so it's slow anyway but I would expect this is a little exaggerated.
Thanks.

Did you use the template file provided with the add-on? Is it with Blender 2.80? With a MacBook from 2013 that would render only on CPU probably with 4 threads, this type of time doesn’t seem to be too surprising. That is why I made this online render mode. This image would probably take no more than 1 or 2 minutes.

Thanks Scrubs, I'm not using the template but am in 2.8 (one of the builds from a few days ago).

Look at the settings in the blender template then. It may help you to optimize stuff.