Position of a sun or a hemi with a shadow?

Support Basics & Interface
1

I am modelling a room that has a large floor to ceiling window. The garden outside the window is very small and and there is a 2m high wall around it. When standing in the room and looking out the window you can see all of the timy garden and the wall covered in vines. When the sun is high in the sky the garden lights up and the room lightens dramatically.

I’m trying to find a way to create that ambient light with shadows in side the room but I can’t get it right.

  • If I use a sun the then the wall creates a shadow into the house
  • If I use a hemi then there are no shadows

I’d like to either

  • put a sun on the inside of the wall
  • or, make the wall invible just to this second ambient sun

Currently, I’m using an area light which is most of the width of the garden. it kind of works but is a little hard to work with.

Any idea?

2

So what you do, is have all the shadow casting objects and the sun lamp on a single layer. (the wall is not in this layer) Then go tho the Lamp Buttons for the sun and enable the “Layer” button which is found in the “Shadow and Spot” panel. (watch out cuz there is another “Layer” button in the “Lamp” panel)

This will only let the objects in the sun’s layer cast shadows and the wall won’t cast.

I hope this helps.

3

Legend!!!

Haven’t tested it yet, but I think that is EXACTLY what I’m after :smiley:

4

That worked well, using the layers, the next thing that the sun can’t seem to do is cast soft shadows.:no:

Real shadows from the sun can be soft when distances are involved but blender doesn’t seem to do this. How are people faking this?

5

Yeah I ran into troubles with sun lamps not casting soft shadows when I was working on my egg project…I ended up just using spot lamps to cast the soft shadows.

EDIT ok so I tried making soft shadows with a sun and it worked. I remember this on my egg project when I tried to do it in the egg scene, it didn’t work but in a simple scene with just a cube and plane it did work. Hmmm…