Interesting Effect of Alpha Mask Plus Mesh on Shadows

[Jennifer Boyle]

In this photo I am wearing mesh feet and a foot alpha mask.  

[SpiritSparrow Skydancer]

No feet shadow! ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo freaky.

 

[Monti Messmer]

Hi, could that be an effect caused by -Shadows only from static object- or one of this settings ?

Anyway only very few will recognize the "missing" feet shadow :matte-motes-wink:

Monti

[Tamara Artis]

In your graphic preferences put reflections to everything (drop down menu, last thing on the list). I think that fixes the reflection.

[Coby Foden]

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Tamara Artis wrote:

In your graphic preferences put reflections to everything (drop down menu, last thing on the list). I think that fixes the reflection.

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I took a snapshot - wearing rigged mesh feet with feet alpha mask. Shadows for the feet appear to work all right for me.

(Using Firestorm 4.4.0.33720)

Even setting water reflections (if you meant those) to "Minimal" or any other setting has no effect at all. The feet shadows still look ok.

 

And Monti Messmer mentioned "could that be an effect caused by -Shadows only from static object- or one of this settings". I cannot see any of such setting anywhere. :smileywink:

Well, anyway, I have no idea what might cause the effect which Jennifer Boyle saw about her feet.

 

PS.

I noticed that Jennifer Boyle used DOF in her picture.  Well, I tried DOF too, the feet shadows still work ok.

[Jennifer Boyle]

I experimented more,  It turned out to have nothing to do with mesh or alpha masks.  No matter what I wear, if the camera is within five meters or so the full shadow is visible, and if it is farther away the feet and ankles cast no shadow.

BTW, I run FS with all graphics settings at the maximum except draw distance and maximum number of avatars.

[Tamara Artis]

I remember reading on some blog awhile back about mesh hands not reflecting the right shadow so I thought this has something to do with it. Sorry if I confused you all now lol

[Sassy Romano]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

I experimented more,  It turned out to have nothing to do with mesh or alpha masks.  No matter what I wear, if the camera is within five meters or so the full shadow is visible, and if it is farther away the feet and ankles cast no shadow.

BTW, I run FS with all graphics settings at the maximum except draw distance and maximum number of avatars.

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I agree. I've just tried this on Ultra settings with shadows both at 1.0 and 4.0, the maximum setting.  It seems to render shadows starting at the head down towards the feet the closer you get so as you pull back with the camera, the feet disconnect first.  It continues up to about the top of the thighs too if you go back further.

[Coby Foden]

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Sassy Romano wrote:

 

It seems to render shadows starting at the head down towards the feet the closer you get so as you pull back with the camera, the feet disconnect first.  It continues up to about the top of the thighs too if you go back further.

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I found a debug setting which can be used to minimize the effect that the feet shadows start to dissappear first when we look at the shadow further away.  It is:

RenderShadowResolutionScale (default value = 1.000)

With that default value of 1.000 the feet shadows vanish soon after looking at them further and further away.  Increasing that value to 5.000 (for example) has a result that the feet shadows look ok even when looking at them from quite a distance away.

[Jennifer Boyle]

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Coby Foden wrote:

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Sassy Romano wrote:

 

It seems to render shadows starting at the head down towards the feet the closer you get so as you pull back with the camera, the feet disconnect first.  It continues up to about the top of the thighs too if you go back further.

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I found a debug setting which can be used to minimize the effect that the feet shadows start to dissappear first when we look at the shadow further away.  It is:

RenderShadowResolutionScale

(default value = 1.000)

With that default value of 1.000 the feet shadows vanish soon after looking at them further and further away.  Increasing that value to 5.000 (for example) has a result that the feet shadows look ok even when looking at them from quite a distance away.

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I tried values up to 50; the behavior of the foot and ankle shadows did not change.  The only change I could see at all occurred when I changed it from one to two; the shadow became more distinct and a little darker.

[Coby Foden]

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Jennifer Boyle wrote:

 

I tried values up to 50; the behavior of the foot and ankle shadows did not change.  The only change I could see at all occurred when I changed it from one to two; the shadow became more distinct and a little darker.

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Oh, that's strange.  I can see a quite big difference when I increase the value to 5.  Much bigger values do not change things much for me.  I noticed that negative values work too, like -5 for example.

It could be that shadow thing is dependent also on some other settings.  There are lots of various debug settings starting with "RenderShadow...".  I didn't try all of them to see what they do.

And it could also be dependent of graphics card and the drivers.

I have:

Graphics Card: GeForce GTX 560 Ti/PCIe/SSE2

Windows Graphics Driver Version: 9.18.0013.1422