Hi everyone. I stumbled upon a problem in my last posted image (you can see a reduced/censored version above). My shadows somewhat disappeared during the process of ligthing, thus inducing the viewers (and myself) to think that the woman was "floating" over the ground. Some details: there are 4 radials at the back of the woman at various heights, 1 radial inside the boiler/furnace, plus 2 negative radials in the farthest corners of the room to give some shadows and roughness. The medium intensity of the positive radials is 12, linear, yellowish color. They all have soft shadows settings very similar, about 65/100. The image is rendered at 64rpp using soft shadows and DOF premium FX. The ground has almost no specularity and none reflectivity at all. So, I'm really baffled here. There's someone who could point me out what she/he thinks about my shadows disappearing? Thanx in advance, Stefano

Ah, sorry... the zones in which the problem is more evident are those highlighted with the red circles. St.

Ah, and there are no lights outside the room. In the windows there are two fuzzy additive spheres to give some glow, but no light from outside. 3rd time :) St.

How high is the ambience of the floor? Seems to me, pretty high. Have you tried changing the value for the soft shadows, too?

three things to check - are the sun/moon shadows on or off in the sky lab? and as you use higher values of softness, the further away from the light source the shadow casting object is the more diffuse its shaow will be. Also with many soft shadow lights, there may be times when one will override another and the shadow will be smoothed out instead odf re-inforced. I might suggest instead of the three radials a single vertically distorted conic or parallel for the figure. it will also help with render time. One last thought occured to me. Negative lights also cast positive shadows. Watch out for that interfereing with soft positives. Good luck and I want to see the final on this (grin)

Also check the shadow intensity setting in the sky lab. If it's faily low the shadows will be very light grey and with all the lighting you have they may be getting washed out.

Thanx a lot for your suggestions. To Erlik: I use to set very low ambience settings, so it's not a problem. But I checked, in case I left the ambience driven by the texture, no way: ambience was dark grey at 3,3. To Incarnadine: thanx a lot, I think the problem is the overlapping of shadows of the various radials, the negatives were set to "Don't cast shadows" just to avoid this problem. The sky was atmosphere off and disable sunlight, plus black background. To Aldaron: same as above, the shadow setting in the sky lab was of no influence... or maybe it's this I get wrong? If I have Disable Sun Light and Atmosphere Off, the shadow setting in the skylab continues to affect my scene? Really thanx again very much to all three. I'll let you know how it progresses :) Stefano

I beleive it still does, it the sky lab acts as a master control.

With atmosphere off everything is turned off for the sky. Shadows, Ambient Color and Sky Dome Color still effect the objects in the scene. What might be the case here is that the sky dome color is set very light. Sky Dome color is like a very diffuse light shining straight down, which tends to illuminate horizontal surfaces (even if they are "inside"). A black Sky Dome turns it off. White is max and can completely wash out "ground" shadows. For a much better explanation, check out page 603 in RWB4. Also looks like the Soft Shadows is set too high. HTH - Dan

And, just incase, check to see if the material on the floor is set to recieve shadows....

Thanks again! Dan, I think you got the point. I tried with a different skydome color, and this seems to work. I won't re-render this image (took a lot of time), but I sure have learnt something new. Whoa! You're a wonderful bunch, you know :) Stefano