Shadows
Shadows SHADOWS ADD REALISM to a rendering, but their purpose goes beyond making a scene believable. Shadows anchor stationary objects to the ground and give flying objects their height. They also give important visual cues about scale and location, object solidity, and time of day. Once you determine the types of shadows you want to have in your scene, you can choose from a variety of methods to create them. Unfortunately, the best-looking shadows usually take the longest to render. In this chapter, you’ll also learn some time-saving methods for realistic shadows.
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Pick your shadows
S
HADOWS CAN BE sharp or fuzzy, light or dark. Regardless of the renderer you use, most shadows come in one of two flavors:
Ray Traced Shadows cast sharp, accurate shadows. Shadow Map shadows can be sharp or fuzzy, depending on your settings. There are other types of shadows available in 3ds Max, but these are the types you’ll use most often.
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With no shadows in the scene, the objects appear to float above the ground. Turning on shadows by checking the On checkbox in the Shadow group for your main light will cause shadows to appear.
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In life, soft shadows are the result of light bouncing around, effectively creating millions of pale light sources. Examples are indoor lighting, which bounces many times around a room, or overcast daylight, which bounces in the clouds before coming down. For this effect, use a Shadow Map with a low Size and high Sample Range. Note that Shadow Map shadows don’t work with Opacity maps.
HOT TIP If you’re not sure what types of shadows to use in your scene, find a photograph with lighting similar to your scene’s lighting and create the same kinds of shadows in your scene. Ten minutes of research can save you hours of trial and error. Try Google Images and search with general keywords like street scene, living room, or outer space.
Sharp shadows indicate objects close to the ground in a hard light like sunlight. Ray Traced Shadows always produce sharp shadows. You can get a similar effect in less rendering time with a Shadow Map with the Size parameter set to a high value. However, the only way to get shadows from an Opacity map is to use Ray Traced Shadows.
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101
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Pick your shadows
S
HADOWS CAN BE sharp or fuzzy, light or dark. Regardless of the renderer you use, most shadows come in one of two flavors:
Ray Traced Shadows cast sharp, accurate shadows. Shadow Map shadows can be sharp or fuzzy, depending on your settings. There are other types of shadows available in 3ds Max, but these are the types you’ll use most often.
1
With no shadows in the scene, the objects appear to float above the ground. Turning on shadows by checking the On checkbox in the Shadow group for your main light will cause shadows to appear.
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2
In life, soft shadows are the result of light bouncing around, effectively creating millions of pale light sources. Examples are indoor lighting, which bounces many times around a room, or overcast daylight, which bounces in the clouds before coming down. For this effect, use a Shadow Map with a low Size and high Sample Range. Note that Shadow Map shadows don’t work with Opacity maps.
HOT TIP If you’re not sure what types of shadows to use in your scene, find a photograph with lighting similar to your scene’s lighting and create the same kinds of shadows in your scene. Ten minutes of research can save you hours of trial and error. Try Google Images and search with general keywords like street scene, living room, or outer space.
Sharp shadows indicate objects close to the ground in a hard light like sunlight. Ray Traced Shadows always produce sharp shadows. You can get a similar effect in less rendering time with a Shadow Map with the Size parameter set to a high value. However, the only way to get shadows from an Opacity map is to use Ray Traced Shadows.
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