Controlling shadow darkness

[paulison]

Hi Guys,

A client has commented that the shadows on this job are too dark (they are almost black).

I know this is due to the material settings and the lighting (my environmental light multiplier isnt very high)

Is there any way of controlling how dark the shadows are? IF i untick transparent shadows in the light settings i can use the standard light settings and change the shadow tint color but then the shadows through glass doesnt work.

is there any other way? getting pretty desperate now... Being given a hard time by clients really freaks me out so much that I can never find these solutions.

[paulison]

basically its my fault, i set the scene up with a bright light and then did the materials according to how they render...they look very dark in the material editor, but render out fine except for the shadow areas which render out as per the dark previews in the material editor.

just looking for a way around this without redoing lights and mats

[vlado]

Are you rendering an interior scene or an exterior one?

Best regards,
Vlado

[paulison]

sorry Vlado, It is an exterior scene with 1 direct standard light with vray shadows with both area shadows and soft surface shadows on. Everything looks good except that the direct shadows from the light are too dark

I realise I should be making more use of the GI setup to brighten up the shadow areas but at the moment i'd be happy with just a quick solution

I was thinking that the colour value in the standard shadow light settings for this light would have an effect on vrayshadow but it doesnt seem to?

hang on ill find an image...

[vlado]

well, one method is to make your environment color brighter... another one is to do this in a post-processing program or use the color mapping; also what are your GI settings?

Best regards,
Vlado

[paulison]

Thanks, yeah I think I will increase the Environmental multiplier back to what I normally use. The client has been very picky about colour though which has lead me to this kind of situation.

the GI settings are IRmap + QMC with -3/-1 , 70 hsubs, 3 bounces and 10 subdivs for QMC second bounces. The light multiplier is 1.7, environmental HDRI multiplier is 1.0.

Im not blaming anyone but myself but maybee an option for idiots like me where the shadow colour can be varied in the vrayshadow options would be nice. Or is this a bad idea?

BTW: I've rendered this scene using a vray dome light now and it looks much better really overall but the client wants shadows *sigh!*