Choppy shadows

# 1 23-04-2008 , 09:57 AM

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Hi all,

I've got a point light shining at some polygon modelled characters that are staggered from the source of the light. The shadow being cast from the front character onto the back character is very 'blocky' or 'choppy' (it looks pixelated). I'd like the shadows to be natural and smooth, has anyone got any ideas about how to achieve this?

Thanks.

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# 2 23-04-2008 , 10:17 AM

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put your shadow resolution up or use raytraced shadows

Alan

Technical Director - Framestore

Currently working on: Your Highness

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# 3 23-04-2008 , 10:39 AM

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Thanks for the reply Alan. I've tried doing that already, and playing about with the other attributes in the point light display but nothing is working unfortunately. You would have thought that upping the resolution, ray numbers etc would make the shadows more detailed but it's not in my project.

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# 4 25-04-2008 , 01:36 PM

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Location: Cleveland, Ohio (USA)

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how are you rendering?

like alan said, if you increase your dmap resolution (don't remember what the default is at but you could probably go to 1024 and not sacrifice render time too much) it should smooth out the blockiness...

you could also increase the dmap filter to a higher number. that won't so much get rid of blockiness but moreso blur it up a bit... try it anyway though.

(oh that's for if you're using depth map shadows on your point light...)

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# 5 06-05-2008 , 01:24 AM

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Neostrider,

Yes, I've tried doing that but no luck. It's only the shadows cast from one character to another that are blocky, which suggests it's something to do with their geometry. They are also referenced from different scenes, does that make a difference?

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