I've posted this before but got no response so I'll bring it up again.
I can't seem get to get Smoothed and antialiased shadows to work in High quality lighting. No matter what settings I try, all I get is the “basic” point shadows or area shadows with 3 samples.

Now I've also coma across an issue with point normals generated for the capped tube. Depending on the number of columns the normals get all garbled.

Can someone please check or confirm this? Thanks.

hi OneBigTree,

have you made a bug report?
https://www.sidefx.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=768&Itemid=239 [sidefx.com]

i think you have to add some system specs.
in houdini you can get the info's from Help >> About Houdini >> Show Details (Alt-Shift-V)
add also the hip even when it's a simple scene.

i only can say make sure to have the driver up to date :-)
at the moment i can't verify your problem…..

You can generate clean normals with the NormalSop; those normals in the screengrabs are computed on the fly by the viewport. if you MMB on the Tube node you'll see the attributes i.e. no normals

It'd be good to log these in the Support menu above, Submit Rfe/Bugs

Smooth Shadows were deprecated with the H11 viewport, and no longer in H14. The entry should be removed. AA shadows is a subtle antialiasing of the shadow edges, not the map itself. There is a difference, it's just not too noticeable.

twod
Smooth Shadows were deprecated with the H11 viewport, and no longer in H14. The entry should be removed. AA shadows is a subtle antialiasing of the shadow edges, not the map itself. There is a difference, it's just not too noticeable.

Ah, thanks that was the info I'm looking for. Yes, the settings should be removed to stop users wasting their time trcking down nonexisting bugs

As for the normals: Yes I know I can change them manually, but I think a 4000 bucks 3d software should be able to produce them correctly in the first place, shouldn't it?
Will submit a bug report though…

OneBigTree
As for the normals: Yes I know I can change them manually, but I think a 4000 bucks 3d software should be able to produce them correctly in the first place, shouldn't it?

If one values software by bugs then what is the value of AD products

Overall one should be a little concerned by an artist that cannot work around these simply issues - all software has quirks, if there was no work around, yes it needs an immediate remedy, but computing normals is simply a no brainer.

Process has always been, find issue, seek work-around and submit bug - every professional I know does it.