Topic: Soft Shadow

[Andre]

Please,

Has some way to make the shadow softer? It always gets so black, and when I increase "Shadow Brightness", the object stays strange.

[madmax]

increase the preview quality

[Andre]

Preview Quality in viewport?

 This is in "very high quality" … I'm talking about the final render.

 The shadow is always black. Is not transparent

[madmax]

post the render

[Aaron]

Also keep in mind that basically all sliders under the light-icon influence shadows to some degree.

The main viewport Cloudyness slider and Cloud brightness (under fog/clouds) can also have a major impact.

[Andre]

It's a test of light and shadow that I was trying to get a more realistic quality, but they think it's not possible.







I didn't have much patience to do correct in Photoshop, but you can get an idea of what I'm trying to show.

[Ferry]

There also is a shadow color option.

[Remko]

We've been staring at the shadows many times during testing thinking they were too dark. If you select the white landscape you can see that the shadow amount is in fact correct.

What I think is causing this is the tone map routine. The tone map converts real color values into color on your screen. The tone mapping we use is inspired on traditional film. The curve of this exposure function makes dark colors more saturated and bright colors less saturated and it looks good. Another effect is it makes the image deeper. Essentially it works as a contrast enhancement. The shadow on the green floor is of a darker tint than the shadow on the white figure. The exposure inreases contrast making the shadow on the grass much darker than the shadow on the figure. You can tweak this by tweaking the contrast slider. You will see that the precieved difference between the shadows will get less when you decrease contrast.

In this image you see the same effect: The shadow should look darker on the doors but it's darker than expected. A straight simple linear tone mapping would remove this effect but you will loose all the benefits of the color processing. Try using some of the other sliders to get the effect you want.

 

We are rechecking the colors to see if there is a problem. It's always possible there is a mistake and if there is we will fix it.

 

[Andre]

I did some tests by changing the values:

Shadow range: 1.0

Shadow brightness: 0.8

Shadow color: 1.0

—-

SSAO Strength: 0.8

SSOA Range: 0.06

—-

Contrast: 0.04

Exposure: 0.4

Brightness: 0.8

Bloom: 0.7

Streaks: 0.1

It was better but still not is very good. The contrast has to be very low to the shadow looks good, but it does affect the final image.