How to create ground shadows in 3DL

VicS

How to create ground shadows in 3DL

as far as I know3 there are only 2 lights that create ground shadows, one is the advanced ambient light, but I dont like using it for shadows as it sort of washes out m4's skin, the other is the archticterctual rig set I bought, but thata is designed for specific areas only-and I have some lite sets I like the look of but they cast zero ground shadows and even if I add the advanced ambient light no shadows are created but as I said even if they were the lite set's nice effect may wash out m4 nice skin look

I want to create ground shadows globally

are there techniques for this?

Leana

What do you mean by "ground shadows"?
All 3DL lights can cast shadows on the ground (as long as shadows are enabled on the light). That supposes you have an actual ground prop though.
If what you need is a shadow catcher there's pwCatch: https://www.daz3d.com/pwcatch

VicS

Do you mean ray traced shadow option? that means the lite will cast shadows correctt?

it did seem to create shadows though they are very faint but since the lite arrows point from different directions I thought they are washing each others shadows out so I rotated  all the arrows to be pointing same way but the shadows did not get more noticible

 

I will try the pw catch, thanks for the suggestion, pw surface looks interesting also

Would you say that pwcatch is straight forward and easy to get a good result?

 

FirstBastion

Ray traced shadows will produce nice shadows on the ground.  If the screen shot is your setting that is what is causing the faint shadows. 

Dial shadow intensity,  95%   and dial softness 8-9  and see if you get more satisfying results. 

 

Also you do not have to activate all your lights to have shadows in 3DL,  unless you want to.  Usually just the main key light is sufficient.

VicS

Thanks, tried it

just one light out of four I put the raytrace on, the rest were kept at none

according to my screen shot, I am chooosing the correct options right?

but no shadows were created again

VicS

With PW Catch,

nothing happens when its icons are loaded, is there something I am doing wrong, it must owrk if it has been sold for long

Also with pw Surface nothing at all changes in the render

Ascania

Have you actually put a ground in your scene for the shadow to be cast on?

VicS

yes I load scenes or I put a plane, there is always a gorund

VicS

here's an example

FirstBastion

Snap a screen shot of your DS "Render Settings" 

 

 

Richard Haseltine

VicS said:

here's an example

Can you select that ground in the Scene? Where is it, in relation to the figures feet, if you use one of the horizontal views (Left, Right, Front, or Back) in Wireframe mode?

VicS

rendersettings in other tabs are all the defualts I have not changed anything and just clicked defaults (guess that means settings all go to the default settings)

 

I did just try a few more lite sets, I found the most powerful ite and put the raytrace on, one of them did work, it did give the shadows, all others did not work

 

Im just loaded your 1950's motel lite set I tried each lite one by one putting raytrace on, (all others are off when the new one is turned on, trying all 4 lityes that way, there was no ground shadow cast from all 4 renders, or from the origina; whoch has all 4 lites set to none for shadow

 

Richard Haseltine

Which 1950s Motel? It doesn't look like this one from what little is visible https://www.daz3d.com/1950-s-era-motel .

FirstBastion

Richard Haseltine said:

Which 1950s Motel? It doesn't look like this one from what little is visible https://www.daz3d.com/1950-s-era-motel .

 It's not this set,  because the 50s era motel includes a 3DL lightset,  that will wysiwyg the promos. 

Plus that's mostly exterior and rooms,  and the posted OP image look like some sort of tavern or western saloon. 

VicS

I didnt  show the image with 50s motel, but I used the test I did with it's lites was in the western saloon

 

but since you mentioned outdoors I just tested it the 1950s motel lite set the same way, only putting one lite to raytraced and there was no shadow in an outdoor scene either

VicS

Great, most lite sets when I can make shadows with the ray trace now, dont know why it wasnt working before some still wont for some reason,  

thanks for the help everybody

JOdel

Are you using a 3DL light set? And for that matter, is your headlamp on? That can make things look like they are lit when they aren't.

Try turning the lights you have off. Then create a distant light. Give it shadows in the light tab, and do a screenshot and see whether that gives you a shadow, or if your light is hidden behind a wall and isn't lighting the scene.

I tend to use the light sets from Flipmode's Easy Environments for working lights, and generally keep the Sun light for the final set up. But there are other Light sets that work, or you can build your own with the lights you create from the program.

FirstBastion

VicS said:

but since you mentioned outdoors I just tested it the 1950s motel lite set the same way, only putting one lite to raytraced and there was no shadow in an outdoor scene either

 I just loaded 50's Era Motel into DazStudio 4.21 .  The scene loads with a built in 3DL lightset,  it has Distant light named "SUN" it already has raytraced shadows set active.  The entire scene has a physical skydome.  In the 3DL version it is wysiwyg to the promo images on the store page.  The sun light does cast a shadow by default. 

Please note: there is also a POSER version of the scene.  DO NOT USE the poser version in DazStudio.  It is for Poser 6 or 8.

Out of the box DazStudio 4.21 render, It does cast a shadow,  and an appropriate shadows for a sunny day with a bit of clouds.

 

VicS

FirstBastion,

Ok, I wasnt using the skydome settings

I was using the promos lite set found under poser-lites

I did the lites one by one again- no shadow

my question is in some lite sets I cannot get a shadow-isnt there a way in these lite sets

can you make make a shadow appear using this promos lite set?

BTW this lite set makes v4 skins look pretty nice

 

JOdel camera light is off-

 

FirstBastion

Honestly,  why are you using the POSER VERSION when there is a dedicated Daz Studio version available? 

VicS

OH, so it is the poser lite sets only where I cannot get the shadows from?

the mystery unravels, thank you

I didnt know it was poser, or didnt know that poser lites wont work the same

VicS

Since both poser and daz lites are found in poser-lites how do you tyell which ones are poser sets?

VicS

Some of the poser sets I like is there a certain type lite I can add to them to make shadows appear while still using the poser set?

Richard Haseltine

If you install through DIM there are two packages, 1950's era Motel PS and 1950's Era Motel DS. You want only the DS version.

VicS

Richard I like downloading poser too to see if it has any interesting looking lites thanks though

-now if I only knew how to make them cast shadows that is what Im trying to do

Richard Haseltine

Poser lights do not work in Daz Studio, installing them is just going to muddle things.

Leana

VicS said:

Richard I like downloading poser too to see if it has any interesting looking lites thanks though

Poser lights won't give you the same result in DS at all though. A lot of their parameters are specific to Poser render engine and will be ignored.

-now if I only knew how to make them cast shadows that is what Im trying to do

 Have you enabled shadows on the lights? IIRC when loading Poser lights shadows are usually turned off.

VicS

After reading your question Leana I went back and tried again-this is weird but very good-now even 50's motel poser lites is giving shadows when I turn raytrace on-weird sionce I tried 5 times before and was getting no shadows, it is a new scene Im experimenting with but I dont suppose that made the difference

 

as for poser lites, many times I find them more interesting than the lites for daz 3DL so I am glad I have both poser and daz to fool around with

I also discoverd that if I put all the lites into a group and rotate them it will help lite sets that origianlly didnt look so good-this is making things look much more interesting now

thanks

VicS

yet there are still some sets that still when switched to raytrace they will still not give shadows, can anyone explain why it happens like that?

Could be somehting I'm doing wrong

Thinking the lite may not be rays not hitting the feet I am trying to rotate all the lights at once but still cant get shadows on certain sets

VicS

I had hidden the wall where the lite direction was coming from thinking that then the ground shadows would be cast

so using raytrace option I was able  to create the wall shadows only

Image shows shadows but no ground shadows created

this is what I need to figure out if someone can help me with this

 

thanks

Richard Haseltine

What is the angle of the light relative to the ground?