Controlling Sun shadow.

[thomthom]

I often find that I wish I could adjust the lightness or darkness of the Sun's shadow. But I've not managed to work out how to easily adjust that.
Anyone got some pointers?

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

I'm not really sure exactly why this is something that you guys feel that you can (or should be able to) adjust, but the question comes up relatively often. The "darkness" of the shadows is more or less a byproduct of the relationship between the brightness of the light and the brightness of the environment. The more disparity between the intensity of the two, the darker those shadows are going to be. The more even they are in terms of their intensity the "brighter" the shadows will be. There's more to it that that as an area that bounces more light around is likely to have brighter shadows, but in exterior illumination situations that's rarely the case.

[thomthom]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

I was doing some playing around with the Sun and it seems that when I adjust the Turbidity up, the shadows where fainter than when I turned it down.


I was thinking that it'd be something indirect, as you mention it is. But I don't have the understanding of what can be done to emphasize the effect I was looking for. I was playing around allot with sun position and colour mapping.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

Turbidity will change that balance between the illumination of the sun and the sky, but watch out. Increasing the Turbidity is only really good for a certain range...after that it looks like crap.

[thomthom]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

Turbidity will change that balance between the illumination of the sun and the sky, but watch out. Increasing the Turbidity is only really good for a certain range...after that it looks like crap.

Yea. I quickly found that out.

[kwistenbiebel1]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

If we could set up a sun object (infinite light) with a target , we could easily control the shadows by adjusting the light (sun) intensity....(as in Max and C4D).....

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

No Beibel, a direct light won't change a thing. The V-Ray sun is a special type of direct light that has its own parameters, of which shadow intensity is not one. With direct lights you could use it as the generator for the sky vector, but the light itself will not be a Sun. It would be more of an equivalent to using an omni light, just that there's a direction associated with it.

[kwistenbiebel1]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

No Damein, I wasn't talking about just a direct light.
In C4D you can setup a posable 'infinite light' (= mimics an infinite distance to the scene,like the sun) with a target and assign the Vraysun tag to it.
You can control the vraySun light intensity independant from VraySky or HDR intensity, which influences the appearance of the shadows.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

You *should* be able to do that now. The settings for the sun are taken from the values setup for the sky, but the sky still takes the texture multiplier into account to figure out its final intensity. Decrease the intensity within the parameters for the Sky and increase the texture multiplier.

[thomthom]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

You *should* be able to do that now. The settings for the sun are taken from the values setup for the sky, but the sky still takes the texture multiplier into account to figure out its final intensity. Decrease the intensity within the parameters for the Sky and increase the texture multiplier.

That's interesting. I've always been uncertain what the difference of these where.

[kwistenbiebel1]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

I tried what Damien states above and it works , ...kind of.
Manages to get a dimmed sun light, but the blue cast bleeding becomes too obvious and that is a problem.

I think you need VforMax or vforC4D to really go flexible on light setups....

[goutham_cg]

Re: Controlling Sun shadow.

sorry guys for interruption..
i haven't much knowledge about all sun and sky things... but if you really want to control the shadow settings ,you can load shadow in vfb channels ...and using that shadow image in photoshop you can easily control the intensity, i guss!!!!