Subtitles of the Movie

Let's get introduced to some Shadows and some Shadow Parameters in this movie. I have the file Lights underscore Shadows opened from the Chapter 11 folder. In here I have my four Teapots in the room and two lights. This one is tea walls, that's what it's called. And if I go to its Include it's just including the wall on the left and the right. This light over here is tea light and if I go to its Include, it's including the floor and all the Teapots. Let's quickly do a Render and that's what it looks like. With this tea light selected I'm going to turn on Shadows over here and simply do a Render. And these are my Shadows right now. Right now by Default I have Shadow Map and here are some Shadow Parameters and some Shadow Map Parameters particular to that shadow. Now Shadow Map, think about it as a pre-computed depth rendering of a scene. What that means is, think about an actual map that is being generated during the pre-rendering phase, that's casting the shadow. So if you really want some really nice soft and diffuse shadows I would use Shadow Map. Also under Shadow Parameters over here you have some options. You have the Color for the Shadows. I normally don't like to use a pure black so right now it's let's say 45 by 45 by 45. Also the Density of the Shadows you can take it down over here. There we go. Let's put it up again. You can have a Map on the Shadow. Let's say for example you're in an animation where you want it to show that the shadow is different than the object for some reason. If it's let's say a funny animation and it's a shadow chasing the character, which is totally different you can do that. So you can throw in any of these maps. So let's actually quickly do that while I open that. So let's say if I have a Cellular in this case there we go. It's a different looking shadow right there. Also some parameters like Light Affects the Shadow Color. I normally just leave that off in most cases. If you have any atmospheric effects you can have Shadows on them. Also under Shadow Map Parameters for this particular shadow, Type, which is Shadow Map, it's also called as Depth Map Shadows in some other softwares. You have something called Bias and Bias will take your Shadow away or towards your object, so either away from the object or towards the object. So right now let's say if I decrease the Bias, let's say even more. Let's increase this. This one needs a really high value. It also goes sometimes hand-in-hand with Absolute Map Bias. So let's go back over here and turn on Absolute Map Bias and you can see my Bias is really taking a long time in this scene. So normally, and you can see it suddenly disappears after that, so I'll have to really keep playing with this value. So there's no set value. You can see almost it looks like it's getting cut off now. So let's come down again and there you go. It's starting to detach from my object. So I'll just take it back to 1 in this case. This is really important, the 512. So the Shadow Map, the map I told you about that's being generated before the pre-rendering phase, or during the pre-rendering phase, let's say if I take it down to 256. So think about a 256 by 256 map that's being generated. How about 128? And you can see how it's clearly not a good-looking shadow. How about 1024? So you really have to play around, and you can see it's getting crisper and crisper. How about doing a 2048? There we go, a much crisper shadow. But at this point if I reach this then I would rather use Ray Traced Shadows at this point, which we'll talk about. There's also something called 2 Sided Shadow so let's say if I go back to a 512 and let's render this scene again, right now you can see that the shadows are not two-sided, so also let me mov this light slightly. You can clearly see that the shadows are not two-sided. So I can go back over here to this light and say give me 2 Sided Shadows. I rendered the wrong view in this case. There we go. So I'm getting some good two-sided shadows there. So everything is closed. Also you can always move the Light and check it. Let's go to Ray Traced Shadows. Ray Traced Shadows are really nice and crispy shadows. One thing we skipped in Shadow Map, if I go back quickly, is the Sample Range. If I take it down you can see how really jagged these edges are. So if you wanted some nice soft edge on the shadows you'd play around with the Sample Range. So I'll go back, it was at 4, I'll go to 5 in this case. There we go. Nicely diffuses it. Ray Traced Shadows are really nice Shadows, really used in architectural visualizations, very nice-looking crispy shadows. Also they support Transparency. There we go again, some parameters for the Ray Trace. Give me 2 Sided Shadows. If you increase something called the Max Quadtree Depth you'll get some really good shadows but again it comes at a cost of your memory so be careful about that. There are some other Shadow Types over here. Advanced Ray Traced Shadows again will support Transparency and they use less RAM really. Area Shadows I really like so if you go to Area Shadows there are some other things over here. You can have a Rectangular Light, a Disc Light, with a bunch of options over here for Area Shadows so play around with these. Again as I said just make a simple scene like this or you can use a scene, make one light, and just make one Shadow Type and start playing around.