2D faceme components not casting Shadows

[romulus]

Hi all. I am having trouble figuring out why my 2d trees are not casting shadows when rendering with vray. I am using trees form RPtreemaker and I am checking the box to use the image alpha in the tree material. The trees look good when rendered but the shadows are not casting. I would appreciate your help. Thanks.

[romulus]

I figured out what the problem is. I am using HDRI images on my environment (a small hdri for illumination and a large for background) When I render without the hdri images the 2d fame component shadows work. Where in the environment can I adjust the shadows affecting the 2d components when when using HDRI for global illumination? Thanks

[romulus]

Solved the shadow issue. Watched this video
http://youtu.be/Fr_bwNU03I8

[fpedrogo]

I'm glad you can find a solution.

Best

[romulus]

Hi Fpedrogo. I am glad my rendering is working the way I want to. I do have one more question. How can I improve the shadow intensity. Right now they seem a little weak, too soft for my taste. Right now I have the shadow subdivs @ 10 and I am using ambient occlusion. I guess I will have to play with the shadow subdivs, but I would like to know if increasing the GI or the BG hdri multiplier or both will help improving the shadows. Thanks in advance.

[fpedrogo]

If the shadows is produced by the sun, it is just depend of the position of the sun and we can't control it. The only thing that we can control of the sun shadows is the blurriness by increasing or decreasing the sun size.

Best

[romulus]

Great! and thanks for your help. Right now I have the sun size at 10. So if I reduce the size...say @3 the shadows will be fainter. If I increase the sun size..say @20 the shadows will be stronger. Am I right? Thanks

[fpedrogo]

If you let the sun size to default value of 1, you will get sharper shadow, if you increase the size, you will get softer shadows.

[andybot_cg]

Also, a thought: as you increase your sun size - it's good to increase the subdivisions multiplier for your sun shadows. They can get noisy quickly if it's left at the default 8. I will use 16 or higher once the sun radius is 5 or more.

[romulus]

Great! Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it. Take care.