rendering shadows problem
 

Hi,
The problem that i have is when i render frames of my character i get jagged edges along the shadow lines (see attachment). I have rendered before and not had this problem and also have fiddled with the shadow settings of the ambient light and also the settings in render globals (raytracing shadows is on the highest setting)but cant seem to find the solution.
If anybody has any suggestions they would be much appreciated, thanks.

You need to post the pic again, it doesnt appear to have attached properly. It sounds like a map resolution problem, But if you're raytracing then that shouldnt be an issue.

Post the pic again and I will help you out.

Alan

attachment
 

here is the attachment (hopefully) thanks.

hmm that's weird, I've never seen anything like that before.... Hmm can you post a wire, I just wanna check if it's your geometry. How do the normals look/ that might cause such a problem. What light rig are you using? and are you using a toon shader?

Alan

Hi,
i will be able to post a wire tommorrow. Thanks for the response, much appreciated. i am not using a toon shader but did have one on originally. I think the normals are pretty normal but will check that. I am just using 2 ambient lights there. Will get back with you tommorrow with wire.

Cheers
Matt.

dude that will be why then! ;) ambient lights are the spawn of satan! Change them to directional lights. Bascially ambient lights will just flatten everything out and illuminate everything in the scene whether it's occluded or not. That will almost undoubtley be your problem :) Do you have shadow casting turned on for these lights? Ambient lights + shadows = major headaches!! :D

Alan

thanks for that tip.
Will have a go with directional lights.

matt

I tried directional lights and it seemed to do the trick. Is there any real differences in the 2 lights apart from the position of the ambient light being taken into account when calculating the the size of shadows?

as I said above ambient lights = bad. You should never need to use an ambient light. It basically will flatten your entire scene out without doing much for it. What you need to remember is that ambient lights lights illuminate EVERYTHING equally, that's a bad thing.

Directional lights send light in from a direction (duh ;)!) and thus will not illuminate everything equally. They have proper shadow information and specular information etc. Take a look in the help docs for an explanation about the different types of light. But let me just reiterate ambient lights = bad!! ;)

Alan