No shadows cast on textured plane
lamoid_5f20d3e469
Posts: 301
OK. So, I've created a room corner from three planar objects gotten from Create > New Primitive > Plane. In the center I have a figure. I have four lights set up to cast shadows. If I leave the planes blank with the default settings ("plains" one could say) shadows are cast as I would expect. If I texture-map the planes with jpeg images, shadows are not cast by the "3Delight" render engine. If, however, I use hardware assisted rendering, shadows appear on the texture-mapped planes. Why might that be? I've tried increasing the intensity of the lights to no effect other than washing out the figure. I'm new at this so I presume that I am doing something wrong but I do not know what that is.
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Just sounds to me like your textures on the Plain are too Dark to see the Shadows or that maybe you turned Ambient on with white at 100% or a texture in Ambient on which also would make the shadows not appear.
Thank you, Jaderall.
I have no texture in Ambient. The textures are all loaded in the Diffuse channels for each plane. Is that the right place for a texture image? (The manual for this program seems to be largely nonexistent.) I believe that you are correct about the textures being too dark for the 3Delight renderer to cast visible shadows. The hardware assisted render does cast them visibly, however. Perhaps I should be asking: How can I make 3Delight cast darker shadows ? -- without saturating the lighting of the objects in the scene.
without seeing a sample of the texture, it is possible. Yes Diffuse is correct.
And I agree,... What Manual!
I find with plane diffuse colors (The square with numbers) anything under 128 128 128, is just to dark. It is a surface that must be light, not a monitor color light output level.
(edit)
on that note, how much light is casting the shadow, that's the other half of the equation.
I hate to say this but you folks really should look around. These have been out a good time now...
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/32249/
Thanks for the pointer, Jaderall. In fact, those are the first documents I consulted. Neither answers my question regarding shadow intensity. Also, I searched the forums many times with different keywords and could find nothing that addressed it. And, of course, I used google. I believe the lack of documentation for the Daz Programs is their main problem. For the most part, the programs are superb in their functionality and they are the best that I know of in terms of price/performance for a commercial product. But the lack of documentation makes them more difficult to learn than is necessary. Moreover, many of the links on the sticky tutorial thread are broken. For example, http://artzone.daz3d.com/wiki is (on my system) 404. All the pages on that server are inaccessible to me, since they all receive a "Could not locate remote server" error.
Nevertheless, thank you very much for taking the time to answer my questions.
I'm not defending DAZ 3D here but you do understand that DAZ Studio 4.6.3.52 (the newest update) is not a finished Product don't you? They (DAZ 3D) are still adding new features, correcting the way some features work, squashing bugs and other things at this time. I know they post the Version Releases as saying things like DS 4.6.3.52 Full or Final but to my view that only applies to the one Build of DAZ Studio. Not to the Full DAZ Studio yet planned and left to be built. Once they Reach the point DAZ Studio does what they want fully, works the way the want it too fully then they can write a fully detailed Manual that covers all the features. But until then doing so would just cause confusion, if a step changes or a menu gets updated the info would need updated as well and that would then need to be updated for all users at one time. And how can that be possible? Some users my not visit the Site often due to Real Life, and they would possibly be helping users on another site, they would then be using information that no longer worked and was out of date, there again more confusion is caused. I fully expect a full Manual once all features get to the level DAZ 3D considers Finished for that Version of DAZ Studio, but anything still growing and changing should not be explained to the masses if it will or could change down the road.
Just as DAZ Studio Version 3 Advanced was the Full last version of DS3 there will come a time when DS4.5+ is finished. Then the manual could be done fully, but in my view only then. Then of course DS5.0 will come out and we will need more info yet again. That is just the nature of software development, the faster things improve and change the less you can document until all changes stop effecting the user side of the software.
Daz Presents Studio v4.6 as if it is a finished product. Check out https://www.daz3d.com/get_studio. That's the page one is sent to trying to get pre download info about the program. There is nothing there that says anything about it being a beta release. Your response above, Jaderall, is the first and only time I have seen this. I am sure that you are correct. What you say makes sense. But I have not be privy to such info despite my best efforts to find information about the program. Where should I be getting such information, which clearly I am not.
It is Not a Beta Release. All I mean is DAZ 3D has not finished working on DS4.5+ at this time. That is why we are now up to version 4.6.3.52 at this time. They still have things that they want it to do is all I mean. And as a small company I can see not investing a lot of man hours into creating user information on features that they themselves know they will be working on and changing in a planned update. That was all I said. NOTHING was said about it being a Beta Version.
I fully expect a Tools Functions Manual once those tools are done as far as changing them is concerned. Example the PGE is now the More powerful GE tool. The way we do ERC freeze has changed as has other features. Any Manual on those would already be out of date, and went out of date in a very short time. That was my only point. Not that it was a Beta Program at all.
I am going to assume your using spot lights since the cube would block the light of shadow casting lights (unless you turned cast shadows off on the cube). Which shadow type are you using? When you added the texture did you alter any of the other settings or just stick the texture in the diffuse? Are no shadows cast anywhere in the scene or only missing on the cube surface?
Really stupid Question Time: Did you turn Shadows ON for the lights? And If you did what were the Shadow settings?
Thanks for all your help, folks. I think that the shadows _are_ being cast. The texture is darkish but not so dark as to preclude shadows; the machine assisted render does show them. Thus, I change my question:
How can I make 3Delight cast darker shadows ?—without saturating the lighting of the objects in the scene.
If there are no other lights, and no ambient strength (or ambient colour is black) then shadows will be black (actually the latest DS does allow you to turn shadows down, but that's a new feature and is off by default). So, you need to check that there aren't additional lights washing the shadows out and that the surface the shadows are falling onto doesn't have an active ambient colour effect (select the surface with the Surface Selection tool from the Tools menu and check the Ambient settings in the Surfaces pane).
As pointed out even a Black Ambient channel set to ON is enough to wash out Shadow effects. And many poser type items default to a Black Ambient channel.
Default Shadowing in DAZ Studio is often done very well. If your not getting good shadows with a light set to 100% Intensity and Ray Traced Shadows On then it is the texture the Shadow is falling on that is Washing out the shadow effect. Only fix for that would to be to use a different Texture that is not that dark. Some colors simply do not blend in Art not even in 3D Art. They add to or cancel each other out. When all is said and done the finished image is just a Digital Painting even if it was generated by a program.