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Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:13 am
by Rikk The Gaijin
I was wondering, is there a way to attenuate the shadows? I need to make them less "black", but I have no idea how... Does anyone knows any trick to do that?

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 2:38 am
by Karba
Rikk The Gaijin wrote:I was wondering, is there a way to attenuate the shadows? I need to make them less "black", but I have no idea how... Does anyone knows any trick to do that?
image gamma?

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 4:29 am
by Rikk The Gaijin
Karba wrote:
Rikk The Gaijin wrote:I was wondering, is there a way to attenuate the shadows? I need to make them less "black", but I have no idea how... Does anyone knows any trick to do that?
image gamma?
No, sorry I wasn't clear. I want everything in the image to stay the same, except shadows. At the moment you can remove completely shadows by using Object Layer nodes, but I don't want them gone, I want them like 50% opacity. Is there a way to do it?

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:02 pm
by kavorka
I would love to be able to do this as well. What I do sometimes is take it into photoshop, control click on the layer to get the selection and use that to make a mask. Then you can modify the levels of the mask to control the shadows. it's not perfect, but it does help in some instances.

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:29 pm
by riggles
When render passes come out later this year you can hopefully output a shadow pass and control it in compositing. Doesn't help now, though.

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 3:29 pm
by dsyee
I'd second a vote for this - maybe by making Greyscale Color an option for Camera and Shadow Visibility in the object layer node?

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 4:17 pm
by linvanchene
riggles wrote:When render passes come out later this year you can hopefully output a shadow pass and control it in compositing.
+1

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2014 6:36 pm
by rappet
Maybe this can help...You can enlarge sunsize, that makes the shadows less sharp, but with more blurry edgde when enlarging.
It does not make the shadows less black, but it makes the shadow edges less sharp and more naturel.

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2014 6:21 am
by bepeg4d
hi,
with the physical sun you can play with the sky color that controls the global illumination:
standard sky
standard sky
clear sky
clear sky
with other kind of illumination you need a big low power emitter, i think :roll:
ciao beppe

Re: Making shadows less "black"

Posted: Sat Jul 12, 2014 9:40 am
by gordonrobb
I'm confused by this thread :)

Surely, if octane is this real world renderer, and the shadows are too dark, it's a lighting issue.

Obviously, the solution is multipass (that's got me thinking about the Fifth Element :) ) rendering. But at the moment, it has to be about adding mor light, carefully I would guess.