OTOY Forums

Hey guys,

I'm looking for a way to soften the shadows I'm getting from the daylight environment to simulate more of an overcast day. Turbidity doesn't seem to affect the sharpness of the shadows at all. Which settings should I be adjusting to break up my shadows a bit? Thanks.

Hi jmarx, i don't know a way to soft shadows with daylight.
One thing that work pretty good is to use a HDRI sky instead of daylight.

bicket,

I'm currently using an HDRI sky and getting pretty close to what I would like, but my hope is that there is a way to adjust this in the daylight system.
Maybe somewhere down the road we could have a sun scale or penumbra setting added.

+1

jmarx wrote:bicket,

I'm currently using an HDRI sky and getting pretty close to what I would like, but my hope is that there is a way to adjust this in the daylight system.
Maybe somewhere down the road we could have a sun scale or penumbra setting added.

I hope so but now it's not possible.
A sun size, just like vray, would be a solution.

if i remember well, in past the hardness of the shadow was affected by the turbidity value
ciao beppe

Sun shadows are softer as the sun is low and harder if its high, so, to mimic a real sun the shadows calculation should automatically soften the shadows depending on the hour of the day you are setting the environment. I think it should be implemented that way, so no sun size control, turbidity, or stuff like that, just let the render engine decide how much soft the shadows should be, or at least a "soft shadows" checkbox to automatically generate this effect based on the hour of the day.

Just want throw a few things: There is two "types" of softness. The first one is the edge of a shadow which is depending on the sun's diameter. We can fairly easily add a new pin to change it in the daylight node. I assume that you want to keep the total brightness of the sun the same.

The second "softness" is the contrast between shadow and non-shadow, i.e. roughly the ratio between the brightness of the sun and the skylight. You can already control that via the turbidity. There is also an automatic attenuation of the brightnesses of the sun and the skylight during sun rise/set.

Cheers,
Marcus

Exposing the sun size would also be appreciated for the perceived larger sun at sunset and runrise which I mentioned in a previous post. If the suns power was also a variable perhaps it could be used for moonlight

abstrax wrote:Just want throw a few things: There is two "types" of softness. The first one is the edge of a shadow which is depending on the sun's diameter. We can fairly easily add a new pin to change it in the daylight node. I assume that you want to keep the total brightness of the sun the same.

It would be perfect
ciao beppe