CGTalk - shadow only lights?

Acceler8

11-01-2002, 02:38 AM

I've got a question that no one has been able to answer for me yet...
How do you create a "shadow only" light in Maya?
I tried turning off Illuminates by default and or emit diffuse and specular while having shadows turned on. I tried both Ratraced shadows and depth maped ones.
I thought about creating a duplicate of the geometry, making it invisible, linking the light to that and casting shadows from it. That works but it creates too much geometry in the long run and is much too complicated.
Theres gota be a more simple way of doing this, does anyone know of one?

Kabab

11-01-2002, 02:48 AM

Just put the light intensity to 0.01 that way you still get shadows but no significant amount of light :)

Acceler8

11-01-2002, 03:13 AM

doesnt work, shadows are intencity driven by the light

empleh

11-01-2002, 03:52 AM

Create a light and set the intensity to -1 and place it where you want it. Duplicate that light and set the intensity to 1 and have it cast shadows. That way the light's cancel each other out except in the shadow where the light intensity is -1, which will cancel out light from other sources giving the appearance of a shadow.

good luck
ww

Acceler8

11-01-2002, 06:54 AM

My god man Mr T is a genious :beer:
You can even create negative shadows by putting the shadow on the negative light. I creates light instead of shadow. You could use a spotlight and map a caustic texture to it and create fake caustics, thats hella cool:applause:
Thanks Meng

empleh

11-01-2002, 12:35 PM

It's about time I got one right. :-)

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