Soft Shadows with target direct?

[stayinwonderland]

So I have a target direct for a sun (dusk scene) and I'm using vray shadows.

 

But the shadows are hard.

 

Any suggestions?

[Ismael]

Area shadows?

See Travis Schmiesing coment:

 

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=957195

 

Also check step 2 in the following:

http://en.9jcg.com/comm_pages/blog_content-art-48.htm

 

The whole article is quite clever.

Edited August 30, 2012 by Ismael
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[stayinwonderland]

I'm not sure those techniques will work? The first one talks about mental ray and the second seems to be a set up for indoors mainly. I've already got my sun direction set up just how I want it. Only I need blurred shadows. Here's a pic:

 

[Ismael]

max light selected > modify panel > vray shadow params > check on Area shadow > play with the values depending on the distance, and scale of the light and objects.?

[stayinwonderland]

Right Ismael, we're almost there. So, you see those two tall towers? They have soft shadows on from some planes I have placed in the sky near them which have a texture which is a cloud opacity map, so the effect is casting cloudy shadows on them. Now I turned on area shadows and the light no longer treats them as having opacity maps - I just get the whole rectangular plane shadow on the buildings.

 

Any remedy for this??

[Ismael]

http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/150SP1/examples_shadows2.htm

 

Is this what you have?:

 

 

That should work. Maybe you are selecting Area Shadows where I have VrayShadow?

[stayinwonderland]

Aaah, he's good.

 

That was it! Many thanks for coming to the rescue once again