Hi everyone, and sorry for my english. I googled already about that question with no results so here i go:
I´m testing (I think everyone is testing stuff since 2.50 appeared :o ) Indirect Lightning and trying to illuminate a scene only with light-emitter objects and no lamps and the renders look the same as if I´d put an hemi lamp (no “shadows”). The light goes thru the cylinder.
I´m using Blender Foundation´s 2.5 Alpha 1 build 27017 from Graphicall, and Blender Internal of course. All World default settings except “Indirect Lightning” switched on.
The question is “is that normal?” I mean, was I wrong if I expected some AO style light/“shadow” balance?
Playing with falloff and strengh just avoids a little that effect of “everything illuminated and no shadows” which looks as if you used an hemi light instead of the “indirect lightning” option. Falloff+strengh “limits” the distance to which the light from the light-emitter objects reaches but doesn´t cast “shadows” (I put shadows under quotes to difference it from the shadows created from Lamps) just as Ambient Occlusion does.
By now I´m playing with Yafaray with good results.
Try to use another type of object (not a 2D one like the circle) and move your illuminating object a bit up. You can also turn up low emit values for your other objects (in reality almost every object bounces the light and becomes a light itself). Repeat: Use low values. Add some colors and play with your settings.
I’m having the same problem. When I use indirect lighting in 2.5, I can’t get shadows to display properly. I think this has something to do with the number of render iterations, but I can’t find this option in the render, world, or material options. Any help is greatly appreciated.
What he said. And you got to place a lightsource with “shadow only” at your emiter object to cast shadows.
Hacky, but fast, especially if you use a spotlight with buffershadows.