I was going through “Deconstructing the Elements Vol. 2” and came across a bit of a problem. I am doing the Oil Fire animation in Chapter 4 (with a few personal modifications of course). I wanted to have some nice Raytraced shadows cast on the ground. I’ve got a Particle Age Map controlling the opacity to make the smoke fade out before they die. The problem is that the shadows only pick up 0% on the Particle Age. It doesn’t go through the whole age. Has anyone else had this problem and found a work around for it. Here’s what I eventually did but I was hoping there was a simpler solution. I mapped the particle system to Black and White and rendered from the light’s postition over a white background, thus making an animatied map to put into the lights projection slot. Does this sound like what others would have done or is there another way. Here’s a sample of how it turned out.
