Shadow Issues

[chris_rw]

I have a scene where I have a few planes with opacity maps that were used to create shadows from off camera (they create shadows from trees that you can't see). I used a light with Adv. Ray Traced shadows to shine down through these planes; the adv. ray traced shadows can shine through opacities, plus you can have colored shadows (my shadows have some nice blues in them).

I've recently converted all the textures in the scene to VRayMtl, making my scene render twice as fast (which is amazing!), but the light doesnt seem to be able to shine through the plane any more. A light using VRay shadows can shine through the plane just fine, but as far as I know, you can't use colored shadows with VRay shadows. Any suggestions on how to fix this issue? Thanks!

[instinct]

You can. You just have to turn "affect shadows" on in the material's settings if i recall right.

Regards,
Thorsten

[dlparisi]

If you give the black portions of the opacity map a slight color and value above black, the shadow will take on that color as if it were shining through a piece of colored glass.

[chris_rw]

You can. You just have to turn "affect shadows" on in the material's settings if i recall right.

This didn't seem to help in getting an adv. ray traced (or area shadows) shadowed light get through an opacitied object.

If you give the black portions of the opacity map a slight color and value above black, the shadow will take on that color as if it were shining through a piece of colored glass.

I wasn't able to get the Vray Shadow to pick up any light by shining it through the colored opacity map, or by shining it through a colored object either. Although I was able to get the Vray Shadow to become blue when I turned the Refract color to a non-black color. This doesn't seem to be a very viable option though, as I have hundreds of textures in just this one scene of a very large animation project. Changing the color on each texture would be time consuming, plus, if I decided the shadow color was a bit off, the readjusting of it would be a nightmare!

There must be a way to have shadow color and use opacity maps, right? =)

[instinct]

you cant use raytrace shadows or adv. raytrace shadows with vray...You have to use vray shadows. And instead of the opacity slot you need to use the Refraction slot in the VrayMtl.

Regards,
Thorsten

[chris_rw]

So there's no way to have colored shadows with opacity mapped objects in vray, other than changing the refract color on every texture in my animation, while using VrayMtls. Here is the scene I'm trying to update. This was rendered with Vray, but using Standard materials. It works fine, but the renders are 3 hours long, but converting to VrayMtl's, it goes down to little over an hour (but I cant recreate this look)!

Thanks for the help everyone!

[vlado]

If you want to use the "Object shadow color" option of the 3ds Max lights, you must UN-check the "Transparent shadows" option in the VRayShadow rollout. This does NOT mean that transparent objects will cease to cast transparent shadows - just that the shadow hue will be derived from the light settings, rather than by the material. The opacity level will still be taken from the material properly.

Best regards,
Vlado