rpc shadows in viz-render, beginner

[TWSARCH]

Hi, this is my first post in this forum.

I am fairly new to the world of 3D and have been working in architectural desktop and viz render for only the last few years. I have been using 3-D cars and tress that we made in auto cad and they work, but look terrible and bog down the computer something awful, as would be expected form the files this results in.

I am trying out rpc with the free – demo content and it looks promising. However I can’t figure out how to get realistic shadows (or any shadows for that matter) from the rpc objects. I tried the shadow tutorials but they don’t seem to be geared to the ADT viz render application and I got nowhere. If anybody can help me with this or point me in the right direction for beginner info it would be great. Thanks.

[Virgil Johnson]

I know this is not the real answer to the shadow question...

 

I tried out the demos myself and needed to use them in a hurry.

 

So I cheated and created another object that was shadow casting and using "object properties" I made the new object not visible to the camera.

 

I got the new object by tracing over the rpc object with a spline...well, you can figure out the rest.

 

I got the shadow good enough to get the job done.

 

Sometime when I get back to it I will try to find the right way to do it.

 

My guess is the demos are not complete packages.

 

Virgil

[TWSARCH]

I actually got the shadows to work with people and vehicles, but not trees, the main thing I will need in an upcoming project is trees. I am not sure what I did but it was a ray trace setting somewhere.

I think the demos are real objects, the vehicle I am playing with appears to be a single, less detailed “parking lot car”. The person seems to be very detailed I don’t know about the tress but they look good to me, except for the lack of shadows.

If anyone can help with the shadows on the trees I would appreciate it.