I am creating an image of a giant bowling ball rolling towards a character who is deperately trying to run away. I have set up the scene in a white box so that the only visible part of the environment is where the shadow falls on the white ground.
Problem is that the place where the shadow should be under the bowling ball actually gets lighter towards the point where the ball is touching the ground.
The scene is lit by a single lamp from above.
Why is this and can I do anything about it?
Hopefully if I have attached the image correctly it will explain it better than I have.
Ooooh - and PS - Vector Blur doesn’t seem to apply to shadows of moving objects
If so, this is a common problem and is related to the ClipSta and ClipEnd settings - especially ClipSta. Some documentation will say that anything within the bounds of these settings will cast a shadow but that’s not entirely correct. The ClipSta should be adjusted as close as possible to the object casting the shadow and the ClipEnd must be just beyond any surface to receive the shadow. Note that when you rotate the lamp to cast shadows from an angle, the clip settings need to be set to encompass the viewable region (easier to understand by messing with it)
Thanks AndyD, but it was actually a simple lamp with raytracing. I did try setting up a combination of lamp (for diffuse) and spot (for shadow only) and it didn’t seem to help, but I didn’t tweak the spot to cover only what was needed.
In the end I have had to use an area lamp for the shadow (which helps as well with the effect of motion as the shadow is soft), but to my mind it didn’t turn out as nice as the plain lamp. Plus I have spent hours tweaking and re-rendering to get the right balance of area lamp size and samples.
If this is a known issue, is this worth submitting as a bug? I am using the 2.43 rc1 but I doubt it worked better in previous versions.
