Cannot Get Soft Shadows!

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wolfcheck

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Cannot Get Soft Shadows!

For some reason I can't get soft edged shadows. I've tried Ambient Occlusion and Radiosity, HDRI lighting, area lights, nothing's working. I can't get rid of this hard edge shadow! It's maddening…..
 

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Looks like you have a Skylight -OR- a Distant Light in your set up -OR- any other light with only 1 sample.

That could be the culprit - is that part of your scene?
 
wolfcheck said:
For some reason I can't get soft edged shadows. I've tried Ambient Occlusion and Radiosity, HDRI lighting, area lights, nothing's working. I can't get rid of this hard edge shadow! It's maddening…..
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When using an area light did you increase the number of samples from 1 to say 5? I find that increases to higher sample values render very little added softness over some value between 5-10 samples.
 
Well, I tried the area lights (usually they work pretty well) but with little success. I'm trying lighting only with an HDRI image. It gives better results but it still looks like I'm getting too hard an edge on the shadow. Here's a (very) small render of what I'm talking about, if you can see it! On the left it looks too hard. Any thoughts?

I was having those irradance cache artifacts again, so I lower the error value and stuff. That wouldn't have anything to do with it, would it?
 
wolfcheck said:
I'm just after something that looks realistic. I think I'll stay with the AO/HDRI and just play around with it. Thanks!
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Hi Wolfcheck, I can definitely replicate the problem, I think there's a glitch here? I took an existing file with hard shadow (spot/distant) lighting and tried to switch over to softer shadows changing these lights to point and area lighting but the samples settings I made for the lights had no effect for ages, I had to play around with the lights for a quite a while to get them to work OK. I will try to post some renders to demonstrate.
 
As I said in reply N°4: Increase the size of the light source too! Otherwise you have just more samples emitting from a tiny spot. :p

Cheers
Frank
LightSamplesLightSize.jpeg
 
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Thanks Frank, I had done what you suggested but found that from a more overhead view you tend to lose the shadow effect completely... I guess the radius setting would need some fine tuning, strangely it worked OK at standard radius in the end though?
 
I got it. I was mistaking its REFLECTION in the wood as a shadow--DUH! Sorry about that. Thanks to everyone for helping.
 

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I have a very simular problem with a model of a "Tilly Lamp" I have a point light inside the mantle (which has a high "emmisive" - so it's brighter - but not giving off light?)
 

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....and....in comparison, this is the same scene, but the mantle has an emmisive material emmiting light - rendered in radiosity, but there is NO light around on the walls? What have I done wrong? -anybody? Thanks.
 

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Uh ... emissive light isn't real light, just a simulation. It doesn't light a scene as you have seen. So you don't do anything wrong.

The best shadows you get with hdri and area lights (which are at the moment the only lights that real work correctly in Falcon. The rest are "legacy lights"). But with a point light and an emissive material you should get some combination of reflections and light that should look somehow believable.
 
Hasdrubal said:
Uh ... emissive light isn't real light, just a simulation. It doesn't light a scene as you have seen. So you don't do anything wrong.

The best shadows you get with hdri and area lights (which are at the moment the only lights that real work correctly in Falcon. The rest are "legacy lights"). But with a point light and an emissive material you should get some combination of reflections and light that should look somehow believable.
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Yes, my first one uses an emissive material for the "mantle" and a point light for illumination. I still using Cheetah 3d 6.3.2 at the moment so i don't have "falcon" yet.....Thankyou for your reply and help.
 
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