stair rail

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 From:  eric (ERICCLOUGH)
4005.1 
Hi Michael

I'm working on a set of stairs.

I started with a section of the stair railing at mid floor up to the landing above ... I was modeling in style 'blue' ..
when I mirrored that piece of the model and placed it to go from the landing up to the top floor and down to the next landing the top and bottom faces of the actual rail turned black.
I added a style (brown in color) and moved the stair rail portion to there ... hoping the black color would conform to the new style. No such luck.

Why did this happen? Is there something I could have done to prevent it? I was surprised that the posts did not exhibit the same behavior.

I suppose I could build it (the top rail from scratch) but ...

Cheers,
eric
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 From:  Michael Gibson
4005.2 In reply to 4005.1 
Hi eric, I'm not sure if I follow completely - when I open up your file, i see something that looks like this (here with the mouse highlight over one piece):



As far as I can tell all the railings are the brown color coming from the "stair rail" style...

Does it look different on your screen? Maybe I'll need to see a screenshot.

Is it possible that your lighting settings are a bit darker and some of the faces that you were worried about are just dark from having light source shading applied to them? One thing to check for that is what are your settings under Options > View > Lighting options dialog.

Do you have the lighting set to the default like this?



Or do you possibly have some other settings for the lighting setup there?

- Michael

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 From:  Michael Gibson
4005.3 In reply to 4005.1 
Hi eric, and as far as I can tell the rails are assigned properly to the "stair rail" style - for example if I change the color of the "stair rail" style to a light green color, it results in this (which seems to be all proper?) :



- Michael
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 From:  eric (ERICCLOUGH)
4005.4 In reply to 4005.3 
Well Michael ...
That is very interesting. I will check my lights for sure but for me it is the top and the bottom of the rail, too. Solid black.
That certainly did not show when you opened the file.
cheers,
eric
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 From:  eric (ERICCLOUGH)
4005.5 In reply to 4005.4 
Hi Michael
Here is a screen shot ..
Notice that the top faces facing right are black and the one facing left (the original) is brown.
The two mirrored ones above and below are black both on their tops and their undersides.
My lighting was set for a fixed source but when I changed so that none were checked it stayed the same though the entire image was a little darker.
cheers,
eric
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 From:  eric (ERICCLOUGH)
4005.6 In reply to 4005.5 
Hi Michael,
This is another one we can simply let go of.

I opened this file on my second monitor (I have a dual monitor setup) and the black surfaces were gone. The railings are brown.

When I shut down and opened again on my regular primary monitor every thing is as it should be.

Gremlins!

I`m glad I took a screen shot ... I am not simply losing my mind.

cheers,
eric
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 From:  Michael Gibson
4005.7 In reply to 4005.5 
Hi eric, that does look like light source shading though - I measured your screenshot with the eyedropper tool in a paint program and those areas are not quite completely black, they're really dark red-brown.


> My lighting was set for a fixed source

When that "Fixed light positions" option is checked, it means that the lights stay in one single location and don't move around with the eye point as they normally do.

You'll probably want to leave that unchecked except for special purposes.


> but when I changed so that none were checked it

What about the drop-down though? In addition to the checkboxes there is also the setting here:



Some of the options in there have less light than others. Try setting it to Lighting style = "Default key + fill lights" or also if that is still too dark for you try Lighting style = "Key + more fill" which is brighter yet.

It's also possible to choose the Lighting style = "Custom key + fill levels" which will show some sliders which you can move towards the light to make the lighting even brighter yet.


I think with your railings though, the ones that are angled to the right just happen to be facing a direction that has less light illuminating them than the other ones, that's why they look different.


- Michael
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 From:  Michael Gibson
4005.8 In reply to 4005.6 
Hi eric, sorry I didn't see your last message there while I was writing that last reply.

I'm glad that it is working normally now!

- Michael
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 From:  eric (ERICCLOUGH)
4005.9 In reply to 4005.8 
Hi Michael ...
Yes, changing the lighting option to default + more fill works wonders ...
The original problem probably had to do with the contrast on my monitor being too high for this situation and the colors I was using (dark blue and then dark brown).
Thanks for your help with this.
eric
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