Two off-the-wall questions (posing and shadow light)

SnowSultan

Hi. I have two unusual questions I hope someone might be able to answer.

- Does anyone know if using the Morphforms on Genesis to pose the figure (like ArmsUp, WaistBend, etc) activates any hidden fixes or other internal parameters that makes that kind of posing superior (in bending, smoothness, realism) to posing each body part manually like we've usually done? I know it's faster to just use NeckBend than to manually pose the head and neck, but what I'm asking is do you get better results technically if you do, or is it just a matter of being able to move multiple body parts at once?

- Does anyone know how (and if it's possible) to create a light in Shader Mixer (or any other way) that ONLY casts a shadow with the intensity and other settings you chose, but *no light* - like a Specular only light, but Shadow only?

Thanks very much,

SnowS

Richard Haseltine

No, as far as I know the Morph forms just adjust the parameters - any JCMs will be linked to the joints, not the morphforms.

I'm you could do that - if it was possible you'd need to detect when the surface was in shadow and apply negative illumination, with no illumination at other times.

omedhue_196e22b81c

I'll give you my impressions. I'm used to animating all the parts, so I tend not to use the morphs at all for animating. With Daz, you can create presets. If you have specially made animations for a scene, say a preset, and it has everything animated, then you are going to have issues when you use a morph on the hand or anything else. Of course, you can go and dial the morph down, but to me, this makes for alot of corrections. Creating your own presets is awesome and with presets you actually make it easier on yourself. I've already made every single hand preset any1 could ever need and it's a breeze to just goto my hand folder and drop in whatever I need, with just a click and no dialing involved. Plus, I primarily work with IK, so how can you get much easier than grabbing an arm and putting it where you need it? So, to me, all those body morphs to animate with are much more headaches than they save me any time.

ReDave

Regarding shadow only light: go in Shader Mixer and create two lights as in the screenshot. Place them both in the same place, opposite wherever you intend the shadow to show. Set them both to Raytracing shadows or DSM. Set one of the two lights "Intensity" to -200 and its "Shadow Intensity" to 0.5. Leave the other light as is. This works in DS3, but I get an error in the log, and no shadow, in DS4, I don't know if it's just me or not.
Remember to set up a third light! ;)
The error I get is

3Delight message #45 (Severity 2): S2050: cannot find shader 'brickyard/{5455a258-8055-48b5-b194-2da586544c7c}/shader_Spot_Light', will use 'spotlight'

Richard Haseltine

Actually, you can do that with ordinary lights - or you could - by removing limits on the intensity slider.

ReDave

The key is the shadow intensity (or colour), though, neither of which is available on default lights. However the omnifreaker lights do have those.

Richard Haseltine

Well, what i was thinking was a light at -n% with no shadows and a light at n+100% with shadows on. Both set to Diffuse illumination.

SnowSultan

Eesh, I haven't been getting responses to this thread even though I subscribed...not to mention new posts aren't bumping the thread like they should - even I'm starting to lose patience with this forum. Fixes appear to be few and far between, I've never seen another forum anywhere as disorganized and unpredictable as this one is now. Anyway...

I really don't understand what you guys are suggesting. ;) If I turn off limits on the shadow intensity slider (on an Uber light for example), but keep the light intensity to zero, nothing is going to happen. If you do find a way that works, can you post a picture showing what settings you're using?

Thanks,

SnowS

Richard Haseltine

I was meaning turn off limits on the light intensity, so that it is casting negative light. Then you use a regular light to balance that everywhere but in shadows, leaving you with just the shadows. Though I should have said the shadow casting light was set to n%, not n+100%. The image is lit from in front of Genesis, at 20%, but the shadow is coming from the side thanks to a paired lighting set as I've described set to -100%/+100%.

wancow

ReDave said:

The key is the shadow intensity (or colour), though, neither of which is available on default lights. However the omnifreaker lights do have those.

Omnifreaker lights have shadow intensity????

SnowSultan

OK, I *think* I got it - a scene like yours has three lights. Light 1 is the general illumination, casts no shadows. Light 2 is the "anti-light", its Intensity is set to -100% and also casts no shadows. Light 3 is the "shadow light", it is located in the exact same location as Light 2, has its light at 100% Intensity and casts a shadow. I tried this setup with 3 default Distant Lights and it works OK, although using Deep Shadow Map gives the exact same hard-edged results as Raytraced ones. Using Uber lights will hopefully improve this.

Thanks very much.

SnowS

@wancow: Yes, the Uberspotlight is a must-have for any Studio user. I wish he had an UberDistantLight too...any way to make one in Shader Mixer? ;)