I was wondering if there was a way to get nice, crisp shadows using depth mapped shadows. I almost always use raytraced because they're simply better, but i plan on doing a small comic strip with the horde werewolf. For anyone who's used that model before knows it has an insane amount of displacement maps for the hair, and with raytracing the scene can take up to an hour to render. 6 scenes = 6 hours = no thanks =P

I've seen people use depth mapped shadows in both poser and daz studio before (think they're called shadow maps in DS) and get some pretty decent shadowing. What's the trick to doing this? Would increasing the shadow map size or decreasing the shadow blur radius do the trick?

If you have Poser 9/PP12 uncheck "Light Emitter" for the hair when using raytracing. If you have a version before, uncheck "Visible in Raytracing" (but not for P9/PP12) to speed things up.

Laurie

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2767631&page=3#message_3425286

I'm with LaurieA. You will be shocked at the difference unchecking "light emitter" will make in render times... litterally minutes vs hours in cases with lots of transmapped material. I personally have had less than no luck with good depth mapped shadows. A pita imho.

Unchecking light emitter on the hair parts, my test render time went from 20 minutes to 1 minute on distance shots! On closer shots of the hair, it's about 10 minutes, down from 30 minutes. Is there any disadvantages or differences to doing this, like losing details?

And thanks for that reference chart raven! Gonna be useful.

Quote - Is there any disadvantages or differences to doing this, like losing details?

None that I have seen.

look thru shadowcam to make sure shadowmap just encompasses werewolf figure, then shadows are most crisp for werewolf (and nothing outside shadowcam).  shadows will be lousy if shadowcam covers entire scene.

This must rank as one of the best Poser tips ever!  After unchecking "light Emitter" on the dynamic hair, the attached image went from about 1 hour to render to about 5 minutes, even with the shadows switched on for each of the 270,000 or so hairs!

When you uncheck "Light Emitter", every ray of light that hits that surface.. stops there. It does not pass "Go", it does not collect 200 more bounces...

That might not matter at all in some renders. Hair, especially, is problematic as, IIRC, IDL and transmaps have problems sometimes in Poser and strip hair, or any hair, by its nature has a bajillion different faces/verts/surface point to bounce light off of. Besides, it's not likely you're going to care very much about losing those bounces.

Unchecking Light Emitter for an entire posed figure may not be an issue, either. Especially if its clothed.. But, for any figure, clothing or object that is the primary object in the scene and receiving the most direct light, unchecking Light Emitter might rob the IDL of the rays needed to give a realistic render.

I'm no lighting wiz nor IDL guru, I just started trying to learn this stuff recently. But, I would uncheck Light Emitter from everything except the focus object, if it's large in the camera, and the bounding objects or environmental object I'm counting on to bounce the light around in the scene. Everything else gets unchecked. I don't need poser calc'ing light bounces off a potted plant when I have fifty-eleven large surfaces that are ready, willing and able to bounce the lights around for me...

PS - I'm talking directly from ignorance, here. So, if I'm wrong, I will refund everyone the money they paid me to read my opinion... :D

To be honest I haven't noticed a difference, if any, when unchecking light emitter for hair props.

Laurie