Shadows are... well... not too bright!

n.drju_6d88cb4c15

Hello again fellow DS Users 

 

     Recently I'm trodding my way through the issue of shadows or rather lack of them in my scene...

     I am currently trying to render a simple scene with a distant light and a Uber Environment 2 ambient light which is enriched by three fill lights of spotlight type.

     I was expecting my figure lit by a distant light (which has 120% power, when I crank this value down the scene gets just too dark as for an outdoor scene) to cast a visible shadow on the ground but it's just not there! Uber light and fill lights are toned down as they should be (80% and 45% respectively) but there's no shadow that should come from the distant light at all!

     I'm slightly annoyed right now because DAZ Studio seems to be the only graphics program that I know off in which shadows need to be actually turned on somehow... I mean... hello? 

     Please let me know how I can fix this issue. I want a nice key light in my scene and object shadows from it. What should I do?

 

Thanks

Fishtales

Are you rendering with Iray or 3Delight?

Uber Environment 2 ambient light doesn't work with the Iray renderer and the other lights are set up differently too.

n.drju_6d88cb4c15

For now I am using 3Delight and seeing what happens are afraid to switch to IRay.  I should also probably mention that when I entered some wild values into things I got the shadows at the cost of having my character's skin rendered unbearably red. 

I can't seem to achieve shadows even in dumb, emptified test renders with distant and uber being the only lights!

Linwelly

In 3dlight you can simply switch on the shadows in the light editor tab there is shadow listed. I usually make it raytraced shadows. And I sometimes find it rather useful to not have shadows on all my lights.

n.drju_6d88cb4c15

No, I'm also far from that. :) I only want the distant light to cast shadows, although I have a vague feeling that the shadow is switched on... :/

prixat

I get a realistic shadow with distant light at 100% and UE2 at 40% intensity. (Raytraced shadows, obviously.) 

BTW what surface settings do you use for the floor that is recieving the shadow?

n.drju_6d88cb4c15

The more reason for me to raise my eyebrows...  I'm doing just the same... I think...

I'm not sure what surface settings do you mean, so tell me what do you have in mind.  I'm trying to render a scene with Predatron's Gatehouse; http://www.daz3d.com/the-gatehouse Distant light shines from the right side and I have no shadow on the dirt cast by my character.

I'll try to upload pics with my settings later.

kaotkbliss

in 3delight, you need to go to each light source [you want] and specifically turn the shadows on. by default, no light casts shadows.

you can go to the lighting tab and select the light source you want to cast a shadow. In the light's options [somewhere] you will see "cast shadows" which will be set to "none", switch it to raytraced (I don't even know why they have the mapped option as it usually causes problems)

n.drju_6d88cb4c15

Thanks for contributing so eagerly to the solution of my problem guys. I am happy to report all is well now. 

I made my lights from scratch using the settings prixat suggested and got a nice daylight with shadows and all. I think I've just overadjusted the settings at first and it caused the problem. Experiment with moderation!