rendered shadows

[srmf]

In VW8 the shadow rendering was much more realistic (with softer edges etc.) than in VW9. I was disappointed with this in VW9. What is the status of rendered shadows in VW10? Can I expect what I had in VW8? Thanks

[Matthew Giampapa]

Shadowing is much the same in VW 10, the ray traced shadows are quite sharp.

However, you may want to try "Custom Renderworks" with shadow mapped shadows. These are somewhat softer in appearance.

[Kristen]

After a lot of fussing around, we've had pretty good results (similar to Raymaker in VW8.5) with the Custom Rendering. Try setting Custom Rederworks Options to:

Detail - Very High

Use Shadows - On

- Shadow Mapped Shadows

Use RayTracing-On

-Recursion Level = 5

Use Textures-On (assuming you're using textures)

Use Transparency-Off (if it's on, the shadows get sharp again)

Use Anti-Aliasing-On

It was a lot of trouble and a lot of advice from this board to get nearly the same quality that a single click of the mouse gave in VW8.5 with Raymaker, but these settings give pretty decent results. Let me know if you find any adjustments that make it even better!

[TiTaNiuM sAMuRai]

With softened shadows, I believe that the size of your scene determines the jagginess of the shadow map used, and therefore the choppiness of your umbra.

[MikeB]

I don't know if anyone else noticed this but if you use the glass shader, even if you turn the transparency off in the custom RW options, you still get a transparent texture when rendering with the custom RW option, apparently the transparency option in the custom RW options is only tied to the transparency shader not the reflectivity shader. Strange but cool.

[Guest]

If using a Spotlight, you can widen spread which makes a nice diffused shadow.