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

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.

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.

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*