This is my firs post here, so big hello to all .
I’m learning Krakatoa from tutorials on FF site, and I’m stuck on Alladin’s lamp tutorial (Casting Shadows on Geometry). I’v selected shadows dir. and “add krakatoa shadows to the scene”. When I switch to default Scanline and hit render, I’m getting shadows on geometry but in reverse mate. (sorry, i’m not very good in english, see the pic)
Only way to get correct render is to put MASK in the projector map slot - instance to mat. editor - IFL file to map - and in output check invert. Then everything is ok, but somehow I dot think this is correct workflow. Any help will be appreciated. Thanx
No, that’s correct. It is essentially a render of the particles, not the negative space of the particles, and so represents the shadow. The projector, however, wants not the shadow, but the light. So you have to invert it because you have a map of the shadow being used in a slot for light.
The Shadows utility is supposed to do the Inverting of the image automatically.
I am not sure what exactly went wrong in your case.
Are you saying the Projector map contained the shadows IFL but the output was not inverted?
Screenshot of the projector maps in the Material Editor would have helped, too.
The utility DOES do that if it’s done correctly. The problem is that, from my experience, you have to do the little button pushes in a very specific order. I’m also having issues where the shadow maps simply fail to render at all. It’s one of those things that either works perfectly or not at all, and I don’t know exactly what I do wrong.
Yes, output was NOT inverted automatically, so I’v instanced it into mat. editor and invert it manually. Then worked just fine.
Unfortunately, I dont have anymore that files (deleted)…
Sorry for late reply…
Do you guys think that a more streamlined, Wizard-like tool that suggests the right steps one at a time would be more useful? (Aside from fixing the whole shadows thing by introducing some form of Deep Shadow Maps support or something like that in the future)
Hi guys…
I’v done again that shadow on geometry tut and the same problem occurred, the IFL file in projector map was not inverted automatically. maybe it’s because I used downloaded file for that tutorial, which already have IFL files in proj. map slot for spot01 and omni01 and I just replaced them with my own (becouse tut files didn’t come with prerendered shadows files, just .max).
Anyway, here is ss from material editor for spot01 that is NOT inverted. Next to him, to the left, is for omni01 with invert box checked.
Btw. I don’t think that wizards are appropriate for this kind of mega/cool/uber/… software
Good documentation (help files) and couple of tuts would do the job.
Keep up with the good work
EDIT:I’v tested it in some other scene, and it’s working fine (shadows are correct), so it’s just that tutorial file wont invert it correctly
Wizard? Not really. I guess I’ve just not had many scenes with more than ~12 lights, so it’s not been too bad. My biggest problem (time killer) has been the shadow files not being created on render. Sometimes there just isn’t a Shadows folder, or it is empty. It’s just that by the time I’m at the stage where I need shadow maps for a composite, I’m too deep into the production to do much bug-finding. Sorry.
