At the moment, I am working in an animation with deph map shadows, in the AVI clip the shadows do not move of smooth way with the character, is a light vibration. My objective is make realistic shadows in the final animation. I tried to use ray traced shadows but this did that Poser crash. There is some way to fix this or is a poser 5 bug? Thanks

You could use a higher "Shadow Map" setting. It's a dial setting for lights. Sometimes I just use one light (infinite light with shadows on) and use a very high shadow map size. It creates more exact crisp shadows.

Also, select the shadow map camera (which you have to do from the list below the document window). Adjust this so it only views the part of your scene where the shadows will be. Repeat for other shadow casting lights if necessary. This will mean you need a smaller shadow map size for the same crispness, and saves memory and render time (important for animations!)

Adjusting the shadow map camera is the best tip on improving shadow maps. After that comes adjusting the shadow map size - increasing that will make your shadows more precise, but also make them use more RAM and rendering time. As a rule of thumb, if you have to increase the shadow map size to more than 1024, you should consider using ray traced shadows instead. Poser should not crash on ray traced shadows. Do you have SR3 installed?

Adjusting the shadow camera really only works for Spot lights. If you are using directional lights, it doesn't work the same. One thing to keep in mind... the shadow map size, is related to the entire scene size, so the shadow map has to be shared by every object in the scene. If you have a ground/floor prop in the scene, be sure to Disable casting shadows for that object (it's not going to cast ON to anything anyway). This works much the same way as Depth Cueing, btw. I have a mini-tut (or 3) on my artists page about this if you're interested.

Spanki, I hate to correct you, but I found out the painful way (ie days of hard work later), that turning off 'cast shadows' for floors or ground props does, repeat DOES, affect the shadows falling on it. It took me days of head-scratching to figure out what I was doing wrong. (In fact, it was les bentley who finally twigged it). It's another poser oddity, but try 2 renders and you'll see the difference. mac

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/homepage.ez?Who=Spanki&ViewArticle=1265

By all means, correct me if/when I'm in error ;). How does it affect the shadows though? Referring to my mini-tut (attatched link), the only difference/affect I see is the benefit of getting crisper shadows on the ground prop when shadows are disabled for that prop. - Keith

Oops.. that links to NUDITY, btw.

Mac, I've re-read your post several times now and I'm thinking that maybe you mis-read my previous message ;). The whole point of my previous message was that it DOES indeed affect the shadows falling on it - it makes them better. Are you saying that there are 'other' effects? Or was this just a miscommunication issue?

Yeah Mac, go ahead and explain Les's mysterious shadow effects for us. ;-) (seen it & done it, but still don't get why it works that way)

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1361737

'so the shadow map has to be shared by every object in the scene. If you have a ground/floor prop in the scene, be sure to Disable casting shadows for that object (it's not going to cast ON to anything anyway)' OK folks, here we go. I don't think I misunderstood your post, spanki, but my point is that disabling 'cast shadows' on the ground or floor prop makes them WORSE, not better. I don't know if I can explain it, because it's one of these weird poser things that happens, but I've no idea WHY it happens. Here's what I found, (after les bentley pointed it out to me). Here's what les said. 'another factor that affects this is wether the thing receving the shadows has "Casts Shadows" enabled. I would not of thought it, but Casts Shadows not only affects wether a thing casts shadows, but also how it receives them' I was trying to set up lights for a room and couldn't get the shadows right. I messed around for days with the shadowcams (I was using spotlights, obviously), with no luck. Then les said to check 'cast shadows' and I realised I'd switched it off for the floor of my room. After I switched it back on again, my problems with the shadows all miraculously disappeared. The pic above shows the floor with 'cast shadows' switched off (left), and on (right). Slight difference, huh? The link is to the thread les posted in. It's long and involved, but post #51 is the relevant one. Now, if anyone else would like to try this out, I'd be glad. It's possible that it was just my own room figure, but according to les, the same thing applies to the poser ground prop, so I don't think so. mac

PS Nance - I owe you a dinner. I'm eternally grateful for your poser.ini tip that switches off those bloody awful red vertice lines. LOL. mac

Ahh.. interesting. I'll go check out that thread. It's probably mixed up with transparency issues though, if your images above are any guide. I guess it may also depend on what type of lights you use (my experiments have mostly included directional lights).

...Ahh, I (kinda) remember that thread... it looks like my e-bots got turned off on it - I'll have to go re-read the entire thing t catch up ;).

'my experiments have mostly included directional lights' That could be a factor, because shadowcams only seem to make a big difference when you're using spotlights, like I was. Maybe the 'cast shadows' thing works differently with directionals. mac