D-map shadow flickering problem(maya software)

[Tallacus]

did you check your Dmap filter settings, and sometime it could be you graphics card, thats all i could think off, hope i could have helped

[hURT]

You know, I ran into this a couple months ago. I had multiple lights with shadows enabled. I then realized that I had another light, a directional light, with shadow enabled also. It took me forever to figure out what was going on until I went in and turned off and on, each and every light until I realized it was that 1 directional light causing the problem. I guess maya doesn't like lights of different brands doing shadows, and guessing this light have different lighting attributes...

So, it might be another light source with shadows enabled contributing to the flickering. But I can't totally be sure... Hope this helps.

[scottiedoo]

Most software packages have dmap aliasing problems. Thats the nature of dmap shadows. But one thing I do not like about maya is the map doesn't seem to be anti-aliased. For example if you render out the shadow map and save it to the disk and open it in fcheck, you can actually see the edges being all choppy.

There are few ways to hide and if possible get rid of these problems.

Having your dmap resolution too low can cause these "jaggies". Normally I dont make my maps above 1024, depends on how large the scene is you are rendering.

If you have the map resolution up, increase the filter size. Usually no more than 3, depends on the shadow you are trying to get.

if you still get dancing edges, turn off the auto focus and decrease the number as much as you can with out the shadows starting to get cut off in your renders. Usually takes a little time to lower the number, render, check, keep lowering until you notice the shadow stopping.

Also, check your render globals and make sure everything is getting sampled at the correct quality you like.

AND if you still get some jaggyness.. (this was a problem of a friend of mines project) .. is to take a look the lights position and check to see if the light if the light is rotated off a little. You can test if this is the problem but again, rendering out a dmap from the light and checking the edges and if it seems that the light is looking at it slanted, then check the roation to help with the aliasing you get with the dmaps. Sometimes its just the light position.

I recommend mostly using spotlights as well.

Good luck and I hope that gives you some ideas on what to try. All else fails and render time isn't a problem, you can always give up and go to raytraced, it may kill your rendertimes, but then you can solve that edge problem easier.

Take care,
Scott

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