Shadow Falloff, How?

Man Behind the Curtain

I have noticed that when I set lights to cast shadows, either Raytraced or Deep Shadow, I get no shadow falloff as would it happen in reality. The shadow remains the same density the whole way. Am I missing some settings? The shadow opacity should change as the object casting the shadow becomes farther away from the surfaces it is casting on. Any help getting my shadows to look more natural would be appreciated.

Vince

Richard Haseltine

Which lights? Distant lights shouldn't fall-off, point lights do (though with Linear Point Lights you have to turn that on in the light settings), the default spot-light doesn't have fall-off but should for realism. If you go to Light Presets>DS Defaults the dsSpot Light there does have a decay setting. (that is assuming you are using DAZ Studio, of course.)

bitwelder

This may not speak directly to your point, but one thing that can be done for more realistic shadows from a distant light is to set the Shadow Softness to something like 1 to 2 percent, and be sure to use Raytraced Shadows. This diffuses the shadow's edge the further away it gets from the object casting it.

FWIW, the new Iray renderer (now in beta) does a beautiful job with realistic shadows in my opinion...can't wait for that to be released.

Richard Haseltine

Note that in the new DS 4.8 beta, 4.8.0.9, the spotlights from the Create menu or the toolbar do have the decay setting available (as do the standard point lights).