Floor Shadow

[GManB]

Quick one. I'd like suggestions on how to create a (fake) shadow on the floor for a piece of furniture. I thought I'd make a thin, mostly transparent prim with a texture of dark areas similar in shape to the piece, link it into the furniture, and position on the floor.

Any other ways ppl might do this? Creating the textures could be tedious if one had many pieces to do.

 

Thanks!

G

[Kyrah Abattoir]

That's how you do it.

That being said It's yet another one of those things people like me delete as soon as the furniture is unpacked, and get really really mad when they cannot.

[GManB]

Chuckles... got it.

Thanks,

G

[ChinRey]

On 1/8/2021 at 7:50 AM, GManB said:

Any other ways ppl might do this?

If you make a low lag environment, you can simply switch graphics settings to ultra and let the render engine add the shadows of course.

But since that's rarely an option in SL, make sure you follow Kyrah's advice and allow your customers to delete the shadow thingy. Baked shadows only work if they are applied to an entire scene. Mixing items with and withou baked shadows usually just looks stupid and objects side by side with shadows indicating different light directions is downright ridiculous.

[npcee]

You can simply place a plane under your object, a light source above everything, and then bake the shadow map for the plane. The result will be a bit harsh, but you can then tweak things up in your favorite image software, and then alpha the white areas. You can also experiment with different kinds of light sources. I think an area light might work better.

[GManB]

npcee,

Is the tool you show Blender? I use Maya. I would expect I could do the same there. I also know Substance Painter and Designer. SP to produce an AO map for the table and plane then through SD for more detail and finally Photoshop for a bit of final tweaking and transparency where it was needed.

 

Cheers,

G

[npcee]

Yes, the example I showed was in blender but Im 100% sure that most these other software do something similar.

[OptimoMaximo]

17 hours ago, GManB said:

npcee,

Is the tool you show Blender? I use Maya. I would expect I could do the same there. I also know Substance Painter and Designer. SP to produce an AO map for the table and plane then through SD for more detail and finally Photoshop for a bit of final tweaking and transparency where it was needed.

 

Cheers,

G

In Arnold within Maya, there is a material called shadow catcher that does what you need

Edited January 15, 2021 by OptimoMaximo

[GManB]

Thanks npcee and OptimoMaximo!

G

[Kyrah Abattoir]

A note on the light you use for this, might wanna use a parallele light (sun type) rather than a point light.

I'll also suggest that you avoid using a 1024x1024 for this and try to use the lowest possible texture resolution that you can get away with, shadows under furnitures are normally very very diffuse and are only there to "anchor" the object to the floor, you don't need much.
Also test it over an actual floor and not over plain white since that's not how it will be used in the end.

Avoid contributing to the typical SL texture bloat if you can (Sorry for the rant i'm just trying to help, but people who can't run shadows in SL are also unlikely to have a lot of ram either, so trading one for the other just doesnt work)