Attached Link: www.masterw3.com

I'm trying to create various logos in chrome, reflecting a sky in the letters with a black backgroundbehind the letters. So far I've been successful, sorta. I have to do postwork in photoshop to darken the background (black 2D square) as it absorbs some light and becomes a slight blue... which stands out when on a Black Background on a web page. The Question: Is there any way to adjust the properties of an object so that light "ignores" it. like a black hole. AND is there any way to adjust an object so that it casts no shadow? It would greatly speed up creation of logos for the web... without the postwork. Thank you for your help guys and gals... samples of my artwork and projects (Morrowind) are on my website, www.masterw3.com I'm hoping to post my pool renders here soon so that you can see a small part of what I do for a living. (take a picture of a customer's house, and render a pool in the yard... then we build it. Odd how I rarely ever get to see the completely finished product.)

forgot to post my image... duh... I need the background to be BLACK BLACK...

Go into your sky settings and pick the default "starfield" with zero haze for clarity. Or you can just go into the skylab and set your haze and fog to zero and your skydome color to black.

click the objects go to the Mat lab look for downward facing arrow (top middle)click it, turn off cast shadows, recieves shadows and self shadows.

You have two choices. You can just delete the ground plane. This will remove the ground to cast shadows onto. Just click on plane 1 in the wireframe vew and press delete. The problem with this is your letters will still cast shadows on your other letters. To set the letters so that they won't cast shadows click on the M next to the selected wireframe object. Click on the circled triangle when thet material window pops up. Uncheck the Cast, receive and self shadows on the menu.

The resulting material renders like this. The two spheres on the left have shadows checked. The two on the right have shadows unchecked. Notice they don't cast shadows on each other or the ground but they still have an ambient shadow opposite the direction of the light. You probably want this to keep your 3D letter effect.

Message edited on: 05/27/2004 10:47

well... i guess you could run the whole deal just through ambience control instead of diffusion. that way you won't even really need too many lights or whatever. or you could always do 2 renders and do the rest in postwork. like have another render with light coming from behind the camera. drac

that is exactly the info I needed, and enough detail that even my dumbarse can understand.. THANKS ! though I do need the sky to remain Blue with clouds.. that's the reflection in the letters... but I do think that with this information, I should be able to get it to work... Thanks again!