I need help with figures casting shadows on itself

Fernando_J

Hello. 

First of all I've to say I use Daz just from time to time and only to get some references for drawings so I haven't played much with all the options and that, I always used the "smooth shaded" view to work and I did the rendering that way with basic opengl since I need just the grey surface figures/objects and get instant rended images. 

I've noticed that none of the images I get have the figures/objects casting shadows on itself. I've tried something like put the (genesis 2) figure's hand in front of its head and an spotlight behind the hand pointing in the face direction so the hand it's in between the light and the face but the face doesn't get any shadows from the hand. 

I mean something like this:

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was looking on the parameters of the spotlight and I couldn't find anything about the shadows, I've tried with pointlights and distant light with the same result. I don't know if it's something I need to set on the parameters of the lights, the figure, the camera or on the rendering configuration or even if doing something like the image above is not possible usign just the "smooth shaded" view and basic opengl for rendering. Or if I would need some addons to get that result.  

As I said I've used this software very superficially so I'm triying to do this post as briefly as possible but I could upload some actual screenshots if you need to see my settings and that. 

Thanks in advance for any help.   

ben98120000

You need to use Intermediate OpenGL for that, instead of Basic one. That will make colored image (skin) so you will probably want to remove textures from the figure and set its base (diffuse) color to grayish one. You also need to set up Shadow Type for the light in the parameters tab. You should have Light - Shadow (Shadow as a submenu) menus when you have light selected in the scene.

Fernando_J

Thanks for the reply. I think I may be doing something wrong then, when select an spotlight and go to the parameter tab I can't see any submenu for Shadow I can see a Light submenu but nothing about shadows there and with the same spotlight selected if I go to the Lights & Cameras tab I see the Shadow word is black like it's blocked blocked and when I click there I only see the "What do I do?" message, it seems I can only use the Area and Photometrics submenus. Same thing happens with two other spotlights in the scene. 

Also I tried Intermediate OpenGL and the result I got was just a whole black silhouette, so I tried with the Passes per light from 1 to 16 in case that has something to do with that issue but still there was just a black silhouette so I turned off the "Use OpenGL Shader" option and I got lights again in the rendered image but the result was the same from Basic OpenGL not casting shadows. The scene I was testing was just Genesis 2 figure with the hands in front of its face and I've created a primitive (sphere) behind the figure so that object shouldn't be getting any lights but it does like Genesis 2 wasn't in front of it. 

ben98120000

Click with right mouse button on the "Lights" tab (on the letters Lights) to get a menu and from menu activate Show Hidden Properties. Do the same thing for Parameters tab. After that  shadow options for the lights should be visible.

Also, top tabs (like "Pose & Animate", "Lights & Cameras") are sort of separate configurations.  Lets say that you have Parameters tab under "Lights & Cameras" and you have Parameters tab under  "Actors, Wardrobe & Props". If you activate Show Hidden Properties for the Parameters tab under "Lights & Cameras", that wont automatically activate same option for the Parameters tab under "Actors, Wardrobe & Props" so you would have to activate it again under "Actors, Wardrobe & Props". 

I get black silhouette if there are no active lights in the scene.

fixmypcmike

The shadow settings are hidden because they're for 3Delight -- showing hidden properties will make them visible, but they won't do anything if the render engine you're using doesn't support them.

AndyS

Are you talking about iRay?

iRay works photorealistic. So if you have light, there will be shadow. And of cause shadow on himself if you pose your character in a corresponding way.
Here I used the standard sun-sky setting. If you use "scene-only" and a spotlight, you'll get a similar effect.