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View Full Version : shadows: reatrace or d-map?


lazzhar
06-19-2003, 10:47 PM
What's the best bet when you want light a big scene with many buildings and you want to get a large shoot the go close up to some detailed houses?
It's frustating when you want to get a good shadow without a terrific rendering time when you want chose the right way to generate shadows .
The Raytraced shadows are the easiest to setup, but you front troubles when you want get a little bit softned shadow.
I've read in jeremy's book that using multi spot lights around the big area would give a better results than using one distant light.
I'd like to hear some advice from peoples fronting this issue(i know it's common).

fxjeane
06-21-2003, 03:55 AM
I would do what Jeremy suggests. Use several spot lights (with the same rotation and with square barn doors) and place them arroud your scene. You can then instance all the light settings to some custom Attribute so that you can chage all the lights on the scene really quick.

You could also use a spotlight to project a pre-rendered map of the shadow area. Use this for the low detail area (parts that are away from the camera). It will save a lot of rendering time and it the details are small enough people wont notice.

above all , be creative.



Cheers
Fxjeane

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