Stencil shadows improvement...

Post by **federico** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 5:05 pm

I'm asking diectly to QoD, because he's the genius who implented the shadows. Is there a way to make the shadows don't affect their source? If I use up to 4 shadows I see a "shading effect" on my actors. These are the shadows projected over the actor by himself. Sometimes this effect is quite beauty and enrich the dinamic of the actor, but sometimes it is fastidious and I think it is the first issue that makes RF so slow using the shadows.
Some other has noticed this issue?

In other words:
Is there some way to make the actor project his shadows over the other actors but not over himself? Or a command to have an actor that casts shadows over the others but that don't allow to be shadow-cast by the others? or a command to limit the num of shadows over an actor (distincly from the shadows over the level geometry)?

Post by **QuestOfDreams** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 8:46 pm

self shadowing is one of the results when using shadow volumes, it would be rather problematic to remove it

Ransom · Post by **Ransom** » Sat Dec 03, 2005 11:51 pm

I've noticed this as well federico, its particularly annoying when dealing with a low-poly actor because the location of the actor's polygons become quite noticable. I agree that some alternatives would be nice such as....

Enable Shadows for this actor (check yes or no)
- actor Casts Shadows (check yes or no)
- actor Receives Shadows (check yes or no)

I know this is possible with volume shadows, I've seen it done in the 3d modeler anim8or http://anim8or.com , for example. But I also know little of programming, and less what level of difficulty it would mean to implement this, and therefore have to take Quest for his word when he says it would be problematic.