Greetings.

I have V5E and was thinking about getting the LightTune plug-in because of the Accushadow feature. It sounds like a real time saver (and on my old P3 1ghz machine I need to save time when possible). So how good does Accushadows work? Does anybody have any experience with it. Is the speed/quality trade off worth it? The main types of lighting I will be doing is either Global Radiosity or Global Illumination. Those two seetings give those wonderful ultra soft and subtle shadows, but as you all know majorly add to render times. So does Accushadows only effect placed lights or does it effect the lighting done from the Atmosphere? I have very few added lights and rely on the atmosphere lighting.

Just would like some opinions on it before I buy it. Thanks in advance!

Message edited on: 05/14/2005 12:54

Accushadows come in 3 different states: 1-Regular raytraces shadows, well this one you know. 2-Hard shadow maps, which are only available when at least 1% softness has been given to the light, any light. 3- Soft shadow maps, available all the time for all lights. I tend to say that shadow maps are not very accurate, the worst being soft shadow maps. With them, the shadows you get have very little in common with the shape they should have, so I tend to use them for additional lights. Hard shadow maps I sometimes use for the sun, when camera is place high in the scene. These shadows tend to be more accurate that the soft ones. When using 1 or 2, you can define the accuracy of the map with a few parameters, and there is one moment when memory requirements are worse than using standard raytraced shadows. And that moment doesn't come in any warning from from Vue, unfortunately! Generally speaking, it does save computing time, but you need to learn how to use them to get the right balance between accuracy and render time. The module has a few other interesting features: for exemeple, you can decide which objects are affected by a light, this can be useful sometimes. The module is the cheapest of all 4, so I say you should go ahead and get it!