Difficulty Lighting large scene...

[gmask]

Originally posted by TigerCGI
I'm working on an outdoor scene in Maya. It has some relatively simple geometry (a trailer) and three or four dmap shadow casting lights. Additionally it has some paint effects trees. The primary light is a blue spot light that is being exceptionally difficult. The shadows are blocky at best and whenever I try to up the DMAP filter they just get too blurry to simulate hard shadows. I'm trying to simulate moonlight and I'm trying to balance Render time and shadow quality. Any suggestions on how to achieve a realistic moonlight without killing render time?

Unless there are moving shadows or objects moving through the shadows you sould render them at the resoltuion that is hsapr and then tell those lights to reuse them or you could raytrace. You may also get better results withthe spotlight Dmaps if you narrow their range of view to only what is in the scene.

[TigerCGI]

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I've already narrowed the cone to what is within the scene...and raytracing is not an option unfortunately. I know there is a way to generate one shadow map that is used continually I just don't know what it is. Any ideas?

[gmask]

Originally posted by TigerCGI
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I've already narrowed the cone to what is within the scene...and raytracing is not an option unfortunately. I know there is a way to generate one shadow map that is used continually I just don't know what it is. Any ideas?

You do a render with Dmaps on and then go to your attributes for the spotlight and under `Disk Based Dmaps` choose `reuse exisiting maps` and it shall find them for you in yur project directory.

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