I've seen this "Z-buffering" artefact before, notably at the plane where two imported (non-treated) surfaces meet. When I have to import multiples of the same part, this artefact will always pop up in some surprising ways; but it's an easy artefact to kill: just move the entire part, or change its scale, or simply delete it. However, the artefact never shows up on surfaces with "properly" assigned appearances, where "properly" means "whatever works". For example, in my project below, I've 3 rendered flanges visible, all of which are of identical overall dimensions. In fact, I could keep exposing new parts until the cows come home and never see this z-buffering artefact, perhaps because a (properly fitted) appearance has been assigned to each surface.
As proof, if I delete my appearances, and adjust the opacity of one of my parts slightly, this z-buffering artefact pops up:
Now I've applied an off-the-shelf brushed metal appearance to only one part and made both parts 100% opaque. Even if I apply the same appearance to both parts, nothing changes and this z-buffering artefact persists. 15 minutes spent weaking all other texture settings also changes little.
However, applying a different, customized appearance that dispenses with a bump texture, and the z-buffering artefact disappears. I won't claim to know why, just that this seems to work for this case:
However, even armed with this knowledge, getting to this point still required considerable fiddling with the texture mapping dials. YRMV!
Dec 20, 2017 8:30 PM
