Soft Shadow Bug
- I've noticed that since v8.5h, the z-buffered soft-shadows (zbss) has improved. Before this, it was awful. still, zbss are extremely difficult to get right, and when animating, it can produce unwanted distortion. Basically, zbss require too much tweaking. Ray-traced soft shadows (rtss) are only good when the rays cast are greater than 30, which is tolerable if it were a still, but for animation, I won't go above 5, as the speed penalty is too severe. It would be nice if you could lighten the rtss (as in zbss). Sometimes, you must use rtss, esp. if you use booleans or transparency, so i try to avoid those, which is not good, is it?
- The following are images showing a bug in the Z-buffered soft shadows in v8.5g
- Comparison renders in v8.0j and v8.5h show correct shadowing.
- Light source is one klieg light set with z-buffered soft shadows on, darkness at 80%.
- All renders are done with antialias on.
- You can also download the project file.
- Produced on PII-450, 128MB RAM, Win98SE.
Softness = 20%, Map Resolution = 256x256 v8.5g |
Softness = 100%, Map Resolution = 1024x1024 v8.5g (bug!) |
 v8.5h |
 v8.5h |
 v8.0j |
 v8.0j |
- This is a lighting test.
- All models come from the AM2000 CD-ROM.
- Rendered by Harun Wahab.