Hello,

Has shadow mapping changed in Vue 9 Infinite from previous versions? They are very faint using the default settings and even when I am able to darken them, they do not appear to line up well with the object.

I have attached an image to illustrate what I mean. Both scenes use the default atmosphere and the default shadow map settings. The image on the left is from Vue 8.5 Infinite and the right is from Vue 9 Infinite. If anyone knows how to make them work better in Vue 9, I would appreciate some advice.

Thanks  for any replies.

nabob21

Here is another image showing some of the shadow map problems. As the shadow approaches the bottom of the sphere, strange artifacts show up in the shadow. I have tried playing with all of the settings and tried different atmospeheres and render settings but I am unable to fix the problem.

Vue's default material is not the best test for this.

Hi Shawn,

Thank you for your response. I will try different materials and see if it is any better. However, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer so can you explain why the default material does not provide a good test for shadow mapping?

Thanks.

nabob21

Shadow mapping is all about scale.  The default material does not give any indication of scale, such as how big is that sphere exactly?  And how much roughness in inches (or feet?) do you want for the shadow's edge on the ground?

Tonight I'll see what settings my scenes use.  I have set lighting to between 2 and 5 degrees softness in the past.  And I use Global Radiosity for lighting, too.  Or are you trying to avoid having to use GR so that you can render faster?

Hi Shawn,

Thanks again for your reply. I would be interested to see what you use for your scenes. I have used GR in the past based on some of the Quadspinner tutorial settings. Render times are not so important to me; I am more interested in good results.

Do you think that the shadow map issue is related to the scaling differences between Vue 9 and the older versions? I did try playing with the size of the Vue unit to see if that made an difference, and it looked like it did have some positive effect but I could not get rid of the artifacts in the shadows, although this was all done using the default textures so I will have to try again with another texture applied.

Thanks for your continuing help.

nabob21

Well I seem to have found the source of my difficulties. If I change the size of Vue 9's display unit to equal .1m then the shadow map displays properly. However this still doesn't tell me how to get it to work properly when the display unit is set to 1m, which is what it was initially set to by default :-(

I have attached an image to show the improvement.