SSS Shader becomes solid black on specific body when playing animation -toggling on smooth mesh by subdivision removes the error
A couple issues that might be connected to the same problem.
1. It took a long while to discover what might be making the body and arm materials render black during animation playback. This issue is also present in iC8. Enabling smooth mesh be subdivision seems to correct the render but isn't a favorable solution.
2. My character still has extra materials for no explanation. If I add a texture to the CC4 created duplicate material "Head_03" and disable the opacity of the original head, you will see the head becomes invisible (there is no additional mesh).
The only thing I can think of as to why there are additional materials is that when I was creating the character from scratch was that when I was creating the body before the rigging process, I sent all the subtools of the body parts individually (head, body, arms, legs, eyes etc) and then labeled each of the meshes and materials in CC4 then merged them. Since CC4's weld option didn't seem to be available for my merged character parts I then exported the merged mesh as an FBX, then opened it with 3DCoat's PPP paint mode where it allowed me to weld the verts. The correct number of materials were showing in 3DCoat and I then exported it to akeytsu to be rigged.
After rigging in akeytsu and examining the ability and skin weight quality to do animations, I then exported it rigged to open in CC4.
When I imported it into CC4 there were suddenly duplicated materials that have no purpose and should not exist.
Later when I changed the original materials that did belong from PBR to SSS, all parts of the character's body except for the head rendered black when I pressed play.
It took a long time to discover a connection and it seems that smooth mesh by subdivision is somehow related because when enabled and I press play, the SSS shader renders correctly.
As for why only the head is not effected, the only thing that comes to mind is your cloth tracking system which allows cloth on the face like beards to conform to the shape of facial expressions is also somehow connected.
Continuing in CC4 with the duplicated materials, the only thing that comes to mind as a possible reason is that when using GoZ, the cache apparently needs to be cleared at times and maybe if it doesn't get cleared it sends a duplicate of the mesh with the same group ID in Zbrush tricking the user to think there is no other mesh because if you flip the "group normal" it shows no hidden back faces if you have "Display Properties --> Double" Enabled (display double-sided)
I don't know if the mesh had been duplicated or CC4 is just creating an error displaying extra materials. If they are connected to the same group in CC4 then simply setting the opacity to 0 on the duplicates should disable the visibility of the original materials as well but this doesn't happen.. so maybe there are no hidden duplicate meshes.
If you know how to fix CC4 not to create this error again, please also correct my project unless a new CC4 update will fix displaying phantom materials and the SSS shader issue.
Thank you.
