Least expensive way of producing good looking shadows?

# 1 03-02-2010 , 09:20 PM

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Join Date: Apr 2008

Location: England

Posts: 13

Least expensive way of producing good looking shadows?

Hi all,

I was wondering what's the best set up to use if you want to create decent looking soft shadows? Nothing insanely detailed or realistic, just some basic shadows that look nice and won't take hours to render a single frame? Say I have a scene with a building and an exterior. I have a directional light coming from outside to simulate the sun, and then I have an area light inside to get some shadows, but when I render it out everything is just practically pitch black inside. So I tried adding an ambient light inside and turning the intensity down, but even with it turned down it just negates all the shadows, and if I tweak the ambient light enough to get some shadows, the shadows look incredibly grainy and just horrible.

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# 2 03-02-2010 , 10:29 PM

EduSciVis-er
Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

Posts: 3,374

Are you using raytrace shadows? Depth map shadows take less time to render, just adjust the resolution and filter size (I think those are the options, don't have maya in front of me, sorry).

-stwert

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# 3 04-02-2010 , 01:45 AM

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Join Date: Jan 2004

Location: Michigan, USA

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it's hard to vote when you can only watch 2 sec of video then have to wait 2 minutes while utube stalls.

I will have to try and download the videos because I don't have the patients to take 40 minutes to watch 15 seconds of video. lol

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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