Maya Directional Light soft shadows issue

[jsylvester]

Hello,

I'm having an issue achieving a soft terminator shadow line with the Maya directional light.

When using "ray traced shadows" and increasing the light angle. The cast shadows do soften, however the terminator shadow line on objects stays hard.

This is not the case when using the Vray sun.

Attached is an image that hopefully explains my problem. There is a simple set up with a sphere, a plane and a directional light. The first example is the Vray sun, the second is a Maya directional light and the third is a similar set up with a directional light in Modo.

Notice that all three examples have soft cast shadows on the plane. And that example 1 and 3 have a soft terminator on the sphere.

The middle image (Maya directional light) shows a hard terminator shadow on the sphere.

I would happily use the Vray sun all the time. However if i have to change the light direction, the intensity/color shifts and this isn't always useful when working on a sequence of shots.



Is there a setting I'm missing on the Maya directional light that will soften this line out and make it behave more like the directional light in modo?

or alternatively is there a way of over-riding the intensity/color of the Vray sun, so that the intensity/color does not change based on light direction?


Thank you,

-James

[dgruwier]

That's not all; if you make it really wide, the shadow gets a weird V shape away from the object, and the specular highlight doesn't change size.

I think it's just generally a good idea to stay away from Maya lights, but I don't think there is a way to disable the dynamic color stuff on the sun, so there isn't really a clean, VRay native alternative. I usually create a sun by placing small, circular area light faaaaaaaaaaaar away and disable the decay. Then I rotate it around with a locater. That renders the shadows, terminator and highlights correctly, but has the downside of not being perfectly directional, which can cause problems on large scenery.

An option to turn off the dynamic color/intensity stuff on the VRay Sun would be great, I think that's all it would take to make it a useful VRay directional light equivalent. You should post that as a request in the Wishlist section.

[jsylvester]

Thanks for the reply. Its been driving me crazy for ages. I didn't know about the highlight thing.

I've been doing the same thing with an area light on recent projects, but its not ideal.
I've also tried to fight the VraySun with the filter color. But that breaks if you change the direction too much.

I would love an override on the VraySun or a VrayDirectional Light. I will definitely post something in the wish list section

Cheers

[stezza]

You could also use a rec light but turn on directionality under VRayLightRectShape1 node.