Shadows: Soft edged and hard edged in same scene?

V-Ray V-Ray for 3ds Max General
1

Hello,

With Vray if you check “Area” shadows you can have soft edged shadows. If you don’t check “Area” then you can have hard edged shadows. What do you do if you need both in the same scene?

I’m new to Architectural rendering. I have been looking at a lot of photos, and it appears to me that in the real world there are both hard edged and soft edged shadows together, not either or.

What do you do about this dilemma? Is there a common work-around or have I just missed something? Can you assign shadow types on a “per object” basis? I’m not real familiar with Vray. I am using RC3 and Max9.

I posted an example photo: , but my question is in general. Thanks a lot for any info and help

2

area shadows ARE physically correct. Objects closer to their shadow have crisper shadows then those farther away so to speak. vray inherently includes this.

3

behold. one sun to light them all.

4

wow perc, a master piece :smile:

5

The edge blur (penumbra) is mostly a result of how far the shadow casting element is from the surface catching the shadow (like Percy said), It is about a 1/2 in. of blur for each 10 feet in direct sunlight.

6

and in physical terms, the rays in when pass through atmospheric layer get scattered and dispersed, so when the ray intersects the top edge of the cube it is disperesed more when it hits the ground plane, then the same ray that hits closer to the gound plane.

7

aaahhh thank you. *bows :smile: