Beer glass scene creation
This course contains a little bit of everything with modeling, UVing, texturing and dynamics in Maya, as well as compositing multilayered EXR's in Photoshop.
# 1 06-11-2006 , 05:10 PM
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Shadow Problem

hey i have this penguin as a character. i also have a white plane as the floor and i have the background white. I have a directional light above the camera. When the penguin is on the ground it casts a really light shadow on the floor but when he's in the air i don't see a shadow at all. basically i want him to cast a shadow on the ground when he's flying so there will be a figure ground relationship. btw, depth map shadow is on. thanks for the help.

nir

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# 2 07-11-2006 , 10:06 AM
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why do you have a white plane floor and a white background? if all you want is the penguin and the shadow on the floor i'd recommend using a 'use background' shader on the plane. the alpha it creates for a still image is only the character and the shadow it casts... which i would think is more convenient for compositing...

looking at your picture i can't even tell where the floor is, so there's the possibility that the shadow is just not in-frame.


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# 3 07-11-2006 , 04:21 PM
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hey neo thanks for the help. i took your advice and used the 'use background'. im having a another problem now. i can only see the shadow at certain angles. if im looking at the object straight on, then i cant see the shadow. but if i rotate the camera a little in either direction, the shadow appears. can i solve this problem or is it a computer graphics card problem? will it behave like this when i batch render? thanks again for the help.

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# 4 08-11-2006 , 06:46 AM
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well you said your directional light is near the camera so there's the possibility that it's just moving behind the character so you can't see it *shrug*


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