Shadows in the hair with Black Dragon

[Frederika Rayna]

I use BD for most my photos, but something that really causes alot of work is the ugly jaggy shadows on the hair. I try everything, moving the sun around, auto shadows vs manual shadow control, but sometimes the shadows get stuck in the hair alphas and its is just dirty and ugly and just can't get it right, I often resort to taking 2 photos one without shadows and merge later in post, but is a pain to do sometimes too. Any tips for working on the Black Dragon viewer and the shadows in the hair? I really dont see this in FS or in the Linden viewer, The shadows in BD are otherwise fine, it just oftens gets "nasty" in the hair, and more specifically, blonde hair where you can really see it. Maybe there are other settings I am missing that can clean this up?

[NiranV Dean]

2 hours ago, Frederika Rayna said:

I use BD for most my photos, but something that really causes alot of work is the ugly jaggy shadows on the hair. I try everything, moving the sun around, auto shadows vs manual shadow control, but sometimes the shadows get stuck in the hair alphas and its is just dirty and ugly and just can't get it right, I often resort to taking 2 photos one without shadows and merge later in post, but is a pain to do sometimes too. Any tips for working on the Black Dragon viewer and the shadows in the hair? I really dont see this in FS or in the Linden viewer, The shadows in BD are otherwise fine, it just oftens gets "nasty" in the hair, and more specifically, blonde hair where you can really see it. Maybe there are other settings I am missing that can clean this up?

Shadows on hair get nasty due to the vastly improved shadow precision and resolution in BD which will have you see shadows on smaller (and closer) objects that other Viewers normally would not include in their shadow rendering. The way Viewers render shadows essentially creates a "depth" map for shadows, essentially a 3D map for where shadows should be, this is then tested against in shaders to apply shadows to the world according to your view. The problem is that applying shadows as-is would overlap them with the underlying image or world/surfaces the depth map is based on (sometimes more or less due to precision), this causes shadows to "flicker" and Z-fight (just like alphas or objects that are overlapping each other perfectly) which is an undesired effect, to combat this the Viewer has a small "offset" that shadows or their checks are pushed back, essentially ignoring the first tiny little bit of a surface and starting the shadows right behind them. This offset is quite big and imprecise in other Viewers, its a very generous set offset which works everywhere without ever causing flicker issues but it also means it generously cuts away shadows, most noticeably a lot of objects close to another surface, such as a necklace on your neck (ever noticed if they are too close they don't cast shadows at all?), depending on your camera distance and shadow resolution and the set offset this can become so apparent that the entirety of your hair stops casting a shadow on your face when it should. A downside of the vastly improved shadow precision in BD is that it is... "too accurate" for things like multiple strains of hair that are alpha (thus allowing you to look through or behind them, revealing the shadows they cast onto the rest of the hair beneath), this creates the ugly "self-shadowing" that you see on a lot of hair. On top of that most hair uses the Alpha Blending mode for soft transparency which sadly doesn't allow for softened shadows due to the way shadows and alpha work independently from each other, unsoftened shadows appear pixelated amplifying the ugly self-shadowing effect (whereas softened shadows would still look somewhat ok). Other than lowering shadow resolution or the "offset" options and thus destroying shadow precision to the point that you will most likely see your entire hair shadow vanish (and other things, like tight clothing pieces, necklaces etc) there is sadly nothing you can do. You can either have generalized allrounder shadows that miss a lot of detail or precise shadows that are too accurate for some of the ways content is made in SL.

[Aishagain]

23 minutes ago, NiranV Dean said:

Shadows on hair get nasty due to the vastly improved shadow precision and resolution in BD which will have you see shadows on smaller (and closer) objects that other Viewers normally would not include in their shadow rendering. The way Viewers render shadows essentially creates a "depth" map for shadows, essentially a 3D map for where shadows should be, this is then tested against in shaders to apply shadows to the world according to your view. The problem is that applying shadows as-is would overlap them with the underlying image or world/surfaces the depth map is based on (sometimes more or less due to precision), this causes shadows to "flicker" and Z-fight (just like alphas or objects that are overlapping each other perfectly) which is an undesired effect, to combat this the Viewer has a small "offset" that shadows or their checks are pushed back, essentially ignoring the first tiny little bit of a surface and starting the shadows right behind them. This offset is quite big and imprecise in other Viewers, its a very generous set offset which works everywhere without ever causing flicker issues but it also means it generously cuts away shadows, most noticeably a lot of objects close to another surface, such as a necklace on your neck (ever noticed if they are too close they don't cast shadows at all?), depending on your camera distance and shadow resolution and the set offset this can become so apparent that the entirety of your hair stops casting a shadow on your face when it should. A downside of the vastly improved shadow precision in BD is that it is... "too accurate" for things like multiple strains of hair that are alpha (thus allowing you to look through or behind them, revealing the shadows they cast onto the rest of the hair beneath), this creates the ugly "self-shadowing" that you see on a lot of hair. On top of that most hair uses the Alpha Blending mode for soft transparency which sadly doesn't allow for softened shadows due to the way shadows and alpha work independently from each other, unsoftened shadows appear pixelated amplifying the ugly self-shadowing effect (whereas softened shadows would still look somewhat ok). Other than lowering shadow resolution or the "offset" options and thus destroying shadow precision to the point that you will most likely see your entire hair shadow vanish (and other things, like tight clothing pieces, necklaces etc) there is sadly nothing you can do. You can either have generalized allrounder shadows that miss a lot of detail or precise shadows that are too accurate for some of the ways content is made in SL.

I'm bound to say that given your comprehensive explanation of your viewer's operation, Niran, you have achieved something wholly undesirable for many.

There is a point when you achieve "too much" and we reach a stage when "more is less".

At this point is BD then a Viewer purely for photos excluding avatars unless they are bald?

Edited July 27, 2022 by Aishagain

[NiranV Dean]

2 hours ago, Aishagain said:

I'm bound to say that given your comprehensive explanation of your viewer's operation, Niran, you have achieved something wholly undesirable for many.

There is a point when you achieve "too much" and we reach a stage when "more is less".

At this point is BD then a Viewer purely for photos excluding avatars unless they are bald?

I have seen plenty nice pictures of avatars with hair (my own included) but i do not use rigged, alpha blended hair. I'd probably change it to alpha masking to get soft shadows but that is probably out of question for most people considering that a lot of human content is simply no-mod.

You also cannot have both and i much prefer much more accurate shadows that do not cut away half my legs at 2m distance from my avatar. I'd go as far as saying that this is a very small portion of content (very specifically rigged, alpha blend meshes) that is not looking good and mostly not for the reason alone that shadows are more accurate, it is a combination of SL's alpha rendering woes and the accuracy of shadows, one reveals the issue the other makes it magnitudes worse. With the shadow offsets currently being completely broken and having returned to how LL does them this should (at least for now) not much of a problem anymore. When i bring back the offsets i might look into finding a better solution that minimizes this issue while allowing to fall back to something similar to LL style precision in case my attempt isn't enough.

[loverdag]

6 hours ago, Frederika Rayna said:

I use BD for most my photos, but something that really causes alot of work is the ugly jaggy shadows on the hair. I try everything, moving the sun around, auto shadows vs manual shadow control, but sometimes the shadows get stuck in the hair alphas and its is just dirty and ugly and just can't get it right, I often resort to taking 2 photos one without shadows and merge later in post, but is a pain to do sometimes too. Any tips for working on the Black Dragon viewer and the shadows in the hair? I really dont see this in FS or in the Linden viewer, The shadows in BD are otherwise fine, it just oftens gets "nasty" in the hair, and more specifically, blonde hair where you can really see it. Maybe there are other settings I am missing that can clean this up?

As Niran said on the end of his post, there is option to make it less precise and "broken to your advantage" as long as you don't mind to sacrifice shadows on entire scene for nice hair.

Examples will probably show better then words what I mean, please have a look (I hope it will work - if you click the picture, it should take you to the album).

- this album is entirely dedicated to Stealthic hair, it means alpha hair. All included pictures are unedited, all taken with Black Dragon viewer. Most important tools for this are two: sliders for shadow settings and / or widlight I adjust for each scene and situation. Granted, it needs knowing the viewer well, it comes with learning curve, but with some practising its not "out of the reach".

[Frederika Rayna]

Thanks Niran for the detailed desciption and thanks loverdag as well I will experiment  and see what I can get,  Can't give up BD and poser for pictures, thats for sure!

[Aishagain]

Thanks Niran, I should know you wouldn't build a potato, looks very good, loverdag.

[Jackson Redstar]

Reading the detailed response by Niran here has left me wondering maybe BD needs a "portrait mode" to imprecise shadows for portait work ... ?