Deep Shadows And Volume Metas..

[semuta]

Hey all, Houdini newbie here, learning fast and loving it, but i've run into a snag in a project i'm working on, not quite sure what the issue is.

I'm lighting up this Cloud demon fella I whipped up out of metaballs, and I can't seem to exceed 2 shadowmaps without causing major issues (big chunks of the metaballs don't render), as well, even with only 2 lights, it seems like one or the other's map(shadow) fails every other frame anyways, flickerfest.

Am I missing something? the metas are shaded with the VEX shader from the "Heavy smoke" FX Tool shelf.. creating my own shaders is one thing that kind of escapes me atm with Houdini, is that shader the source of my woes? I've seen mention of VEX shadow shaders, is this something i need to employ above and beyond the settings in the default (shelf) lights? anyways, if anyone has any ideas that would be killer.

thanks

James

[semuta]

something else, I wrote out the metaballs as 2 different geometry sequences (writing out the sequences is necessary to the shader for texture coordinates), so i could separate the materials for the "cloud environs" and the "cloud demon". so it's:

"file" -> "material" -> merge (with another file in and mat) -> null (render) and it seems as though i can render one or the other without artifacts, not both...

so is it more likely that I can't merge sequences of metaballs so easily? is there a better way? I thought rendering out both the clouds and the demon as the same sequence and using groups or something to differentiate, but groups don't seem to be written out in the .bgeo.

forgive my newbishness, any ideas?