I set the renderer to save attenuation maps, but no files were written. So I set an output for the actual render buffer, but still nothing is getting saved. From the “what’s new” in beta 12, it seems like it should go in the directory where the render output goes, but I see nothing. Is it specified for somewhere else?
It reads like this is designed to allow you to have particle shadows on matte objects rendered with something other than Krakatoa. But could this not also allow you to cast Krak shadows on Krak particles without the particles showing up to camera? Like I want to have two particle systems shadowing each other, but I want to render them separately. Yeah, I know, overlapping will happen as the buffer is only saved when all the particles are in the scene, yadda yadda yadda, but in this case, I have forground and background and no overlap.
Where is the depth? Looks like ALL particles will cast a shadow on ALL geometry no matter what the relative distance to the light is. So that a particle that is being shadowed by the matte object will actually cast a shadow ON the object when used with another renderer.
Yeah, Krakatoa needs a Krak Deep Shadow plugin for the light. Similar to how Bunch Of Volumes did their shadows. You calculate the depth and attenuation anyway, so you just need a way of getting the shadows in the lights to use that data to make new shadows.
Depth? You already know that Krakatoa cannot generate depth maps from particles.
In the case you described, if a matte object is between the light and the particles, the attenuation map has a “hole” so the light does not cast a shadow from particles onto the geometry - the matte object renders unshadowed in Scanline, but its Shadow Map fills the hole on the ground, producing a solid shadow together with the rest of the attenuation map.
Just tried it and it worked. Beta 12 did not do that though, it was fixed in 13.
Ah, so I need to add the objects as matte objects first. That might help.
It’s still a bugger problem though to get passes out of krakatoa for compositing where the shadowing can be stored and re-used not in Scanline, but in Krakatoa.
Krakatoa doesn’t want to render projection lights.
Um, if there was a way to store the LCache independant of the PRT’s being rasterized, that would do what I need. So a two pass rendering, once with the particles that cast shadows and once without them.
Shadows in Kraktoa are always black? I can’t seem to tint them, and shadows don’t “filter” so that green particles cast green shadows.
Projection Lights not supported is logged as a bug.
But you should understand that the LCache saves the result of the whole lighting process and when you enable it and calculate once, it completely SKIPS the lighting pass in subsequent renders.
So you would not be able to use projection maps to cast shadows in Krakatoa with LCache on anyway.
We have logged the wish for better shadow support (Depth maps etc.) for future releases. Not gonna happen in 1.0.
Right, I didn’t mean the actual LCache, I meant the process of generating the deep shadows. I can’t make the shadows without also rendering the image. Not a huge deal, I just needed to describe which part of the rendering I needed. I used the wrong term.
I also notice there is no way to have a light that is NOT casting a shadow. I would like this if it is possible. The light would still have the hotspot/falloff and make speculars and would still tint particles, just not make shadows.
So you want basically to be able to run in a “Lighting Pass Only” mode that calculates shadows but does not run the Final Pass… Sounds reasonable. It could be an option in the Render Particles / Save Particles drop-down list.
You are right, right now a light always causes particles to self-shadow. The Cast Shadows switch in the light is being respected only by Matte Objects (so if your light does not have the checkbox checked, the objects will not shadow the particles, but the particles will still shadow themselves)