Here at our office, we have been using RPC for entourage for quite some time, just as many of you have. We upgraded last year to VRay for our production renderer and have fully integrated it into (if not rebuilt around it) our pipeline. We would always end up using the RPC shadow light plug-in to create the shadows for all of our RPC items. Once we upgraded to VRay however, we were struck with a problem. The shadow light would not create the shadow map (.jpg) using VRay.
After messing around with it more, we were able to figure out a workaround for this. By using the scanline renderer and a standard 3ds light, we could create the image, and then work it back into our VRay based file, and create our final image, which would then include all the shadows for our content. This was all done in Max 8 and now 9.
We are now looking to upgrade to 2009, and the latest RPC plug-ins. However, we are unsure as to whether or not this is possible anymore. On RPC's own site, it specifically states that it is NOT compatible with most 3rd party rendering engines, including Mentalray. We contacted Archvision, and were told that the shadow light not only will not work in any fashion with '09, but it has apparently never been able to be used with a 3rd party renderer.
Obviously we found this odd, since we had been doing it for just over a year. So my question is this... have any of you been able to use the RPC shadow light plug-in (in any way shape or form), in a 3rd party renderer, to create shadow maps (OR use the scanline created maps)?
DR
