Need help with shadows using mental ray!!

[eZekiel829]

Hello I am new to this forum, forgive me if this has already been discussed.

 

I am setting up a composite scene in 3ds Max with a matte/shadow/reflection material in the scene. It is picking up shadows alright but its the shadows themselves that I am having issues with. I have an mr Spotlight that is passing through a few planes with an opacity map of tree silhouettes; I am attempting to give the illusion of the trees in the original background to cast shadows onto the geometry I have set up. but the tree's shadows are not projecting. I have the settings set in the tree card's object properties set up to cast shadows, I have no idea what I am doing wrong.

 

Sorry if this is difficult to understand I will post images of my scene in a sec to better explain.

[Justin Hunt]

what type of shadows is the light using?

 

jhv

[eZekiel829]

they are ray traced shadows

[eZekiel829]

[ATTACH=CONFIG]41822[/ATTACH][ATTACH=CONFIG]41821[/ATTACH]here is what I am recieving, the shadow I am getting from the car is way too sharp and needs to be softened as well. here is the tree silhouette I wish to cast onto the side of the car. if you have any other suggestions I would greatly appreciate it.

[Justin Hunt]

in the old days we'd add the tree map as a projection and the light have a negative multiplier amount. The light would exclude everything except the car. Not too sure if this would still work though.

 

jhv

[gazbo]

I'm no expert but perhaps try putting your silhouette map into the A&D shaders cutout slot rather than as an opacity map, I've found everything seems to work better in MR if you use the A&D shader.

[Matt McDonald]

Ray traced shadows are going to be sharp so you might want to try Mental Ray Shadow Map. This will probably slow down your rendering but your other options (blurring the opacity map or soft shadows) are probably going to do that as well.

[eZekiel829]

Thanks for the thought Justin, the projection map worked alright; Gareth, I am still kind of new to 3ds could you elaborate? Where would I find this A&D cutout.

[gazbo]

By A&D I mean change your material type to the Arch & Design Shader that is purpose built for use with mental ray. In there under special purpose maps is a slot called cutout which works in a similar way to an opacity map. It might not make any difference to what you're trying to do but as I say I just always seem to find things work better in MR when using the A&D shader.