Hi all, In a previous post I asked advice on lighting a lamp. I proceeded to take a look at Kixums lamp tutorial (thanks Kix) and attempted to follow the instructions on lighting the scene. Ive included the result here. As you can see there some wierd things happenning, and I cant quite figure out how these shadows are being formed. Any ideas? Thanks, Max

My guess -- and it's only a guess -- is that the size of the bulb light you've placed inside the lamp is larger than the lamp shade, so we're seeing the light hit the wall partially unobscured by the lampshade. Try reducing the scale of the bulb light and see if that helps....

I thought it said in the Carrara manual that the size/scale of lights and cameras is irrelevant in the 3D environment. If you're using a point light, the light should eminate from a single point, i'm guessing the center of the the light. I may be wrong, because I'm also guessing, but I don't thing changing the scale will affect this any. -Scott

If you're using C2.0, make absolutely sure you patch it. There is a bug in C2.0 with soft shadows the patch addresses. If this doesn't fix it or you've already patched, let us know. Nice scene! -Kix

Hey all, Okay. Just in case I did check the scale of the bulb. That seems not to be causing the problem. I am using a patched version of C2.The problem seems to be coming form the lamp shade. It dosnt appear to be casting a shadow (cast shadow i checked). As you can see in this render. I pivoted the lamp shade around to see how the shadow would change. I did uncheck cast shadow on the lamp shade hanger parts. Ill keep at it. Cheers, Max

Well if the shade isn't casting a shadow, I'd say something else next to the bulb is. -Kix

Hmm.... I'm stumped. Next time I'm playing with Carrara I'll have to see if I can duplicate the problem. In the meantime, could you turn the shade itself into an anything glows object and just delete the point light? Just a thought as a workaround.

How is your lampshade constructed? The shadow pattern looks like intersecting polygons. Two thoughts come to mind: is your object double-sided and are all your normals pointing the same way? How are you making the lampshade glow? Is it an anything glows light? In which case, maybe you need to change the standoff and minimum distance. I haven't seen Kixum's tutorial so I don't know how you built the scene.