What am I doing wrong? I'm using P5 (with all the latest SRs) I'm trying to use the DAZ cyclorama with the Wilderness settings. I applied the appropriate suppiled lights (and deleted my default ones). It came out too dark, so I changed the main light (the one with shadows enabled) intensity, changed the texture application in the MAT room to set the diffuse(?, anyway the top one) setting to 1 and make the colour white). I checked for "casts shadows" and made sure that the cyclorama "figure" did indeed cast shadows. I cleared out any "ambient" settings. I upped the shadow-mask settings. And yet, after everything I've done, STILL the shadows from the characters start from after where they should! (ie there's a gap between the figure and the shadow). So I tried the same, deleting the characters, and adding a cylinder. I dropped the ctlinder down below the surface of the cyclorama. Same effect.... So what have I missed? (screen-caps follow..)

Oh, and I also made the ground plane invisible, and moved the cyclo upwards (to avoid any posible conflicts..) Pic 1. (Sorry about the quality; I had to increase the brightness in a paint app for anything to show up. When I get the shadows thingy sorted, I'll sort the darkness problem out in Poser..) P4 render...

And with Firefly..

The Mat room settings

The P4 shadow problem is commonplace, pretty much because the renderer is shite. Firefly render looks ok to me; unless you were looking for a different effect I can't see what's wrong with it. Oh, and turn shadows OFF for the Cyclorama itself, except for any trees and stuff that are included. Obviously, they need to cast shadows but the ground and backdrop don't.

Thx, Paul, but if you look closely at the bottom of the cylinder (which passes THROUGH the Cyc "figure", Y trans set to below the cyc), in both versions you'll notice shadow doesn't start from the edges of the cylinder, which it oughta. The above were just a couple of trial shots; In the real scene (which I don't want to show 'cos of possible TOS violations, and also giving away secrets..:-)) ), the shadows of the figures involved show the same effect, only more so. Makes them look like they're floating (even when their toes are buried.. As for turning shadows off, the main cyclorama is a figure. The shadows off is not an option. (Unless I've missed something somewhere...) Cheers, Diolma

For a figure, you can toggle "casts shadows" for the individual body parts, but not for the whole object. Just what you need for something like the cyclorama. Lighting on all these scenery-background objects can be tricky. The lights need to be coming from the same side of the vertical backdrop as the camera is looking from. It can help a lot to use ambient_color rather than diffuse_color for the actual backdrop material. Often the provided lights are not all that good.

Thx, Antonia. I'm now thinking about saving the cyclorama as a .obj file, and re-importing it... That may work (but tomorrow; it's 12:10 here..) Cheers, Diolma

You can switch to RayTrace. The shadow will be a bit harsh in P5. Or bring your shadowmap spot in closer with a lower map. Full angle start/end 1024 or 512 map, .450 on bias (lower to darken). Make sure there is a shadowcam associated with light in question and tune the cam first. Real important. Just in case,,,parameter box>cameras>shadowcams. It's the right one when light on lighttree is facing you. Scale down until your scene is just covered. Use Y and X trans, too

Poser does not handle shadows well. Most of the time it's best to turn 'Casts Shadows' off for things that only need to receve shadows and don't actually need to cast them, like walls and floors, but sometimes the oposite is true and it helps to turn on 'Casts Shadows' for something that needs to receve shadows (I have no idea why). Sometimes placing a square prop close underneth/behing the object that needs to receve the shadows will help.

Raising the light a bit and having it pointing more downwards will usually help. The shadow cams are a big factor of course, try scaling the shadow cam for the light down a bit, or raising it up a bit, or both (unfortunatly this will change the perspective of the shadows). The main thing is to keep everything that needs to cast a shadow within the view of the shadow cam.

This problem you are having seems to happen mostly with objects that have no, or very little thickness.

You may like to look at the thread below, it deals with a slightly diffrent aspect of the problem.

http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=1059682

Message edited on: 07/21/2005 20:49

If you have Poser5, make sure you are using the Firefly renderer, then switch the Light properties to "Raytraced" and make sure raytracing is active as well in your render settings. That should fix the problem, but will also give you very sharp-edged (but correct) shadows. In Poser6 you can also use the shadow blur radius tool to soften shadow edges for an even more realistic effect. (hope that helps a bit)

Many thanks for the replies:-)) Havn't sorted it yet in my scene, but I'll give these ideas a go. The reason I havn't sorted it is 'cos there are other problems with the cyclorama in P5 regarding the lighting (everything comes out so dark; then when you make everything brighter, whether in the Mat Room or by the lights, the other planes' transparnt areas show up bright against the background (even with NO ambient, FULL transparency and all the other glitches that can occur fixed). I know DAZ doesn't support P5, so I'll just have to make the best of it -- I don't have the time, patience nor skill to try to recreate the "wilderness" in Bryce to use as a background :-) One thing I will try though, is importing the base Cyclorama .obj into a 3D app, extruding it along normals just a tad, and see if the resulting (no-longer flat) surface receives shadows properly.. If I solve this, I'll post something. If I don't I'll probably forget all about it and go on to something else... Or faff about in post-work instead... Cheers, Diolma