The Shadows Are Watching You...HELP!
VIArts
Posts: 1,526
in The Commons
I'm trying to get a character's shadow to have "eyes" and a "mouth", so that when I animate it, you can see the shadow bliink and talk on the wall.
I tried this by hiding parts of the head (skinHead, eytes, teeth, tongue) and shining spotlights through the eye holes, but it only makes the eyes on the wall really big. Adjusting spread angle doesn't help much.
Any ideas how to accomplish this effect?
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Comments
Create an independent shadow as a prop or even better as a gobo light with different versions of eyes open and close and same with the mouth. You could use the render of you char in plain light in front of a white backdrop where it creates a clear shadow as the map for the gobo light, and alter in some photomanip program. Probably requires you to turn shadows of on your char ( note to run of the clothes /hair then as well) on the scene you want to render.
Not sure if that works out but that what I would try
You could try rendering the eyes and mouth only and composite them on the shadow in a video editor. Or maybe change the surface properties of the eyes and mouth to emit light--I don't know how to do that but I've seen other posts about it in the forums.
I've done that before on a computer screen with UberSomething -- I think UberArea or UberEnvironment2. I swear I had them both, but theyre not in my stuff!
Well, I got somewhere...
I have 2 G1s in the scene. One casts shadows and has some surfaces at 0 opacity, one doesn't. I'm using a plain, old distant light. No postwork.
Only problem is, if i set the shadow-caster to not be visible in render, the shadow won't be visible either...
That looks like a good start, can you put the setting to cast shadows on but put the opaciyty to 0 for the human figure? I'm not sure if it still casts a shadow then.... completele other idea would be to use a plane in the way of a shadow play to put the shadow on from the other side and give the plane some sort of translucency. not sure if that works either.
Ciao LightofHeaven I tried to follow your requests and I've tried to do a scene with Iray Engine shaders considering the Art of Chinese shadows. In the viewport picture you can see all the elements that I've used.
The shader of the wall is translucent because it gives a blurred outline to the shadow cast, but also works with the refractive added to the translucency. I used Jade shader, removing the green color and some adjustment.
The lights are photometric, more powerful intensity to the shadow on the right behind the "Shadow Actor".
The poses of the Actors are the same (of course
) but if the Actor in the foreground covers the "Shadow Actor" You can move Him along the x axis ( like I did in my render) . Do not move the camera to centered the face of the "Shadow Actor" because the distance from the camera and the wall translucency make a wrong position of the glowing of the eyes and mouth out of the Shadow Actor face, so "point at" the Camera to the Shadow Actor head.
Eyes and inner-mouth of the "Shadow Actor" have glowy emissive shader. Create an exaggerated facial expression so the glow can be seen.
I hope to be helpful, I did not consider the animation but I think you can realize it easily.
Hmm...I've not even started with Iray yet, because I don't think my graphics card was good enough, but I just got a new powerrful PC, so I can start.