I need to render a moving object (car, plane, whatever) that will be on or close enough to the terrain surface that it’s shadow will be visible on the terrain as it moves along. Unfortunately, this terrain is going to be heavily covered with plants and other vegetation, and the complexity and size of it makes it impractical to render solely in Maya with my current setup (24hrs=1frame would render for months).
However, if I render the entire animation of the terrain in Terragen (which does an incredible job btw) and only render the moving object itself in Maya, I could cut down the render time and just composite the two together. But, how to get the shadow to appear to fall on the terrain?
I’ll probably figure out something that will work, but I’d appreciate any suggestions of someone knows the right way to do it.
Thanks…