OTOY Forums

one more quick question before I continue with experiment:
why is it that specular material not casting a colored shadow? even after I change "specular" and "tranmission", I am still only getting a black shadow cast from daylight.

here is a test render. no caustic on this one, yet. the window hole is a Portal.

I hope you use pathtracing and not direct lightning...

face

Ok, there are some caustics when using HDRI with "pathtracing" or "pmc" mode.

yeah, the shadow is still black, even when I use pathtracing.

I read another post and matej also answered the same question:
"refractive caustics currently work only with IBL & emitters, not sunlight, I forgot about that"

- J

That explains also why the shadow of glass objects with daylight illumination mode is black and not transparent. Caustics & transparent shadow is the same phenomenon.

At some point this problem will have to be solved. I wouldn't mind some "non physical" tools, like a "sunlamp" or something (to go together with a HDRI), because in the end people care more to achieve a certain look, not how physically correct that look is.

@matej
That's exactly the best way to put it in context. When things are too physically correct, it's not always artistically correct.

I hope sunlight will shine through glass (bidirectional path tracing) soon.
Along with a shadow catching material and SSS there is no reason to ask for any more