Cineversity

In my scenes when my plain effector parameter is set to -1 for my fracture object, shows the shadow of the object even though it isn’t there. Might be easier to see the scene.

Hi Mark Parris,

Interesting. As I normally try to avoid “Soft-shadows” as they flicker and have other shortcomings, I never had that problem. They are only fast, other than that, they are the dinosaurs of the package ;o) They take samples—with a distance—and simulate then something that looks like shadow. The softness is the interpolation among the samples, hence the contact shadows are problematic.

Anyway, the render speed is key and you should be able to use them. What happens here looks like a priority conflict, but I’m uncertain, as even caching the Fracture was no help at all. (Certainly a case for the support!)

So, what to do, switching to Area light? Would work.

Much faster is this “work-around”:

Place the Fracture under a Connect-Object and switch off the “weld” option if needed. Things should work fine then.

My impression, this workaround forces the scene to create the “invisible” objects (S= -1) and the light works properly.

All the best

Sassi

Thanks for the fast reply as always. It worked with the connect-object so I’m rocking and rolling. I didn’t know that soft shadows were a bad thing to use. how do you get soft shadows without using soft shadows? surely you don’t use hard shadows for every solution. I am definitely missing something here.

You’re welcome Mark Parris!

The Area shadow is the most precise of the Light Object options, if reality is targeted—they allow for sharp contact shadows and soft distance shadows. But you buy this quality with render-time.

The soft-shadows create a map or database (some call it texture, but that is misleading IMHO) and that becomes applied to the scene. In the image that I have attached, I illustrate the way I understand the process. The small spheres are the samples. The map as well the “Sample-Radius” as well the Bias, need to be set precisely to get the best out of it (Attribute Manager>Shadow Tab). If the samples are too far from each other, the result will be less appealing. IF the blue sphere is animated, you can easily imagine how difficult it might be to get a nice shadow out of the “structure” of the small spheres calculated/interpolated.

If these get too high, it might work even slower. BUT: if the scene is static (at least where the light goes), and only the camera moves, the shadow map has to be calculated only once (Render-Settings>Options), and then the real advantages starts.

They are not bad, but with everything…, the more you know about the advantage and the shortcomings, the more successful is the possible use. (roughly said ;o)

BTW, I know that was only an example scene, but if “Soft-shadows”—then try to use a Spot, to get the samples as much where you need them. An Omni-light has 90ºsquare to calculate, six times, and if the map is only 250x250 the shadows are not as good as a perfect spot could deliver.