Lack of Shadows.

[BenGoble]

Hello, teaching myself 3DS Max, and I made a chair which I've put mental Ray Materials onto and the render is attached. I can't seem to get shadows though!!!

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As you can see it looks quite nice so far. But it doesn't have any shadows!
I've got four spotlights in the room, each have the parameters shown on the first image below, and say shadows ' On. '

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I've also checked that the renderer is setup for shadows as is shown in the image below this. What am I missing!? I've checked the materials too for casting and recieveing of shadows and it appears to all be turned on. Any ideas?!!!

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Ben

http://cid-4e0d55029f38ea44.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/CadTutor%20Help%20Needed/chair%20leg.max

is a link to the file. I haven't included the materials as they are all in several locations.

[Cad64]

If you're rendering with Mental Ray, then you need to use the mr lights. Delete your spot lights and replace them with mr Area Spot lights.

[BenGoble]

Heres the result when using mr Spotlights

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Still no shadows :(

[Cad64]

I would suggest setting Decay to None.
Also, take a look at this little tutorial: http://masteringmentalray.surpass.nl/content/view/26/10/

[BenGoble]

Problem Resolved! Within ' Shadow Parameters ' on the mr Area Spot rollout the ' Object Shadows ' was set to a density of 0! No wonder! Thanks for the help CAD 64

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[MaxwellEdison]

Looks good, now the only question is what such a nice chair is doing in a dank basement. Must be for the IT department.

[Cad64]

Problem Resolved! Within ' Shadow Parameters ' on the mr Area Spot rollout the ' Object Shadows ' was set to a density of 0! No wonder! Thanks for the help CAD 64

:shock:AHA!!! That explains it.
Looks good. Did you model the chair or did you find it online?

[BenGoble]

I did one of the 3D Total tutorials, i.e. the link below, but that chair was a bit lame so I added a few of my own touches to it.

http://www.3dtotal.com/team/tutorials/hugechair/chair1_01.asp

p.s. It's in a dank basement because I like concrete and plaster way too much! They made nice textures. Here I've done another chair without the dank basement! lol.

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This was all done using splines modelling, so it was pretty different from the other chair which used loads of modifiers on primitives.

A question or two about the whole scene setup.

1. What sort of lighting do people use to create a studio scene. I tried to create a form that would bounce back light onto the chairs. Does anyone use an array of lights above with only one light at a lower angle that has shadows turned on?

2. Anyone know what to do with the sample range in 'mental ray shadow map' as shown on the image below. It appears to range from a really harsh pixelated shadow from 0.01 up to a fuzzy blob of a shadow as you move up into 0.025. None of which are really realistic.

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[Cad64]

Nice looking chairs. :thumbsup:

1. I use different lighting rigs for different scenes. It all depends on the effect you're trying to achieve. But if you want light to bounce, just go to your "Indirect Illumination" tab in the "Render Scene" dialog and enable "Final Gather". Then you can set the number of "Diffuse Bounces" you want. But remember, higher numbers will drastically increase render times.

2. Samples and Sample Range go hand in hand. Up your Sample Range to get a wider transition from dark to light on your shadows and then up your Samples to smooth out the pixelation.