#help
8 messages in this thread
I'm a student, just finishing a course in 3DStudio. For my final project (due
tomorrow! Oct. 26), I created a bike & rider and merged the OldTown.3ds mesh
file as my background. I placed a spotlight to cast shadows — I first played
with a tutorial given to us by our instructor on casting ray traced shadows in
the OldTown — and used all the parameters of the tutorial to establish my
spotlight in my file. It, however, will not cast shadows. I worked with my
instructor & he can see no reason why I cannot get it to work. We checked the
attributes of the building and double checked the dialogue boxes for the light.
Can you suggest what I could be doing wrong or overlooking? The same light
placed in the original OldTown file works perfectly. Thanks for any help anyone
can give. I'd still like to know the answer, even if I don't make it in time
for my project!
Margaret Bowling
Margaret,
Did you check that shadows were turned on in the rendering dialogue? It
is possible to set up maps, shadows, etc., but have those turned off when
rendering.
Kevin Krell – Computer Support Associates
Kevin,
Thanks, I did check that. My instructor double checked! Any other
ideas?….
Margaret Bowling
Margret, if the file is not too large, you could Email it to me and I could try
to tell you what's going on with it…
-Alan
Margaret,
Check a few simple things:
* Ambient light level? Set it to zero and see what happens.
* You've probably already done this but check the spotlight definition
and make sure "Cast Shadows" is ON; "Attenuate" is OFF; and "Exclude" is OFF
(gray, not red).
* Try different settings with your hotspot and falloff. Make them both
about the same and see what happens.
* Turn off all other lights in the scene.
* Make sure the spotlight is plugged in and the bulb is not burned out.
<g>
That's all I can think off at the moment.
Alec Jason
Margaret:
Tag this one on to Alec's list:
Make sure the object(s) you wish to receive shadows is set to do so.
– Bob Ritger
Also, if you're using bitmapped shadows, your map size may be too small — try
increasing the shadowmap, and turn off the "casts shadow" attribute for the
ground plane, and anything else outside of the influence of the shadow casting
light (or anything where, like the ground, the shadow cast by it will
not/cannot be seen).
Dave
I had this same problem before and went crazy. What it ended up being is that
the objects having shadows cast upon had gourard shaded textures. Shadows don't
appear on flat or gourard objects(unless they've updated it in r4). So make
sure your textures are phong or metallic.
———-Will