Digital Art Zone

OK. What The hell. The linearpointlight does not emitt ANY deep shadows. But when raytrace is chosen it works. Anyone care to explain? Is this a bug? Why have the option to choose deep shadows if it does nothing?

That’s just the way linear point lights work (it bugged me that you get no error/info message when you select deep shadow map with them, like you do with the UberPoint lights ... so it can be done!).

so what can be done? I’m confused by your post.

Set the linear point lights you have to use ray-traced shadows if you wish them to cast shadows.

Sigh I hate raytrace shadows.

Do you have to use a point light?

Well, the thing is It gives a nice 360 lighting, and is easy to control. I only use it for internal scenes, and it gives me the lighting I am looking for. Is there an alternative type 360 light that gives deep shadows?

Any light that utilizes falloff must use Raytracing.  Since Linear Point Lights do, well, there ya go.  Just like Uber Points.

:( ok.

I’m not sure it’s the fall off that the issue, but as far as I know all point lights in DS support only ray-traced shadows - spot and distant lights, which have a defined direction, do support mapped sahdows. If you are viewing only a limited part of the area the light will effect you could use a spot light (though you’d need uberSpot, or to go into Shader Mixer, to get fall off) since that too radiates from a point, with a limited angular spread.

Whats different between uberspot and the regular spot in daz? I havent really touched the uberstuff yet..Or shader mixer. I’m scared its gonna break my brain:(

The regular DS spot has no fall off at all - it just shines on to infinity. I assume, from your earlier comments, that you want the light to fall off with distance.

There’s also a hybrid point light in UberSoft Lighting Kit http://www.daz3d.com/shop/ubersoft-lighting-kit/ - though it’s most likely using raytracing as well just by design (DSMs in 3Delight are essentially renders through a light as if it were a camera, and point lights are no cameras).
On second thought… this is a hybrid point light that can merge into a direction light, so I have no idea as for the actual algorythm Omnifreaker used for it.

Having said that, I hate raytraced shadows as well, but I’ve used USLK a lot and I like it very much. It’s pretty fast and looks cool. Though the shadows it gives are quite soft (by design, again, hence the name), and I’ve had people point them out to me as “unrealistic” (yet to my NorthEuropean eyes they’re quite alright, both for overcast day outdoor stuff and for interior stuff - my real life home also has very soft shadow lights…)

The biggest downside of USLK, to me, is that I can’t grasp how to make it shade low poly figures better (without faceting). And I like low poly…

There’s always an option of making an “inversed dome” of spotlights (like a hedgehog) to simulate a point light, but you’d need to check if 16 shadow maps are going to save you any time vs a raytraced shadow…