General Category > Anim8or v0.98 Discussion Forum

suggestion for new algorithm for soft shadows

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an8kid:
This process would work in theorie.. but it is hard to implement.
as...
shadows also cast on objects... not just flat floors. (this means if you Gaussian blurred where the shadow falls.. your objects would be blurred.

cpicon92:
Well, if you were to render the hard shadow as a png image and then blur that and put it back on the image it would still go faster than the current soft-shadow system. I wouldn't mind having it as an option, especially to render movies.

hihosilver:
There also has to be blocking out, if you blur the edges they could go over something else.  The theory seems pretty complicated, though I would be interested to know if it'd be fast or shorter.  Still, you couldn't achieve any scattering like in monte carlo shadows.

Steve:
Hey, everybody, image based soft shadows simply has too many problems.  Yes, it can be done but there are endless ways that it won't look right.  Anything that doesn't consider both the 3d geometry of the scene and the direction of the light hitting each point will have problems.

BobtheVila:
Actually the image based shadows can work, this masking is done in SilentHill2-4 and DT-Racer, the whole pixel wide halo that's not so annoying.

Actually you could mix both as it's not getting soft shadows, it's getting soft shadows that go soft based on distance. I think you could do both hard and gassious passes and then combine them using alpha destination plus depth detection to make distance determining soft shadows.

A sample version can apply aonly a mere extra sample, then use a gradient object fill-in, they work very well. They leave sharp points sharp and fill the rest in quite well, looking like the high sample version.  It may look smoother then the blending used now too.

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