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soft shadows on filament

realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28
in Daz Studio Discussion

Is there any chance that soft shadows exist in Filament? I tested it again in the latest version of DAZ Studio and now there are hard shadows. That's a huge improvement!

Comments

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 9,570

    Yes, use 1 or 2 Spotlights to well shape the shadow on the target figures/objects. Increase Spread Angle of Spotlights to soften shadows, and/or tweak Shadow Threshold, Shadow Smooth, Env. Weight properties on shadow receivers (i.e. walls, floor) if you use Filatoon shader ~~

    SNAG-2025-3-21-014.png
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  • realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28

    crosswind said:

    Yes, use 1 or 2 Spotlights to well shape the shadow on the target figures/objects. Increase Spread Angle of Spotlights to soften shadows, and/or tweak Shadow Threshold, Shadow Smooth, Env. Weight properties on shadow receivers (i.e. walls, floor) if you use Filatoon shader ~~

     Those shadow settings don't appear to me...

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 9,570

    What shader are you using ? What I showed is Filatoon ~

  • realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28

    crosswind said:

    What shader are you using ? What I showed is Filatoon ~

     No, just regular filament... I wasn't using filatoon. I wanted to try something realistic, although I managed to achieve something good, but I thought I could improve the scene more with the shadows and lights.

  • jbowlerjbowler Posts: 841
    edited March 24

    The default DAZ Studio spotlight is a "point".  That means the shadows are as hard as hard can be; select the light, go to it's "parameters" pain and check out the "light" sub-tab, the "light geometry" property.

    This can be useful; many photographers, typically, almost invariably, working in black and white have taken pictures with light that hard.  It's a thing; "dark", "noir" etc, etc etc.

    So change the "light geometry" to "disk" and make an umbrella; portrait lighting in traditional photography often used umbrellas to creat a disk from a hard light source.  The umbrella is about 1m and it's typically 2m or so from the subject.  It's a big disk.

    > I managed to achieve something good, but I thought I could improve the scene more with the shadows and lights.

    I'm no good at this so what I do is to work light by light.  I turn all the lights off (creepy, eh) then I turn them on one at a time and see what happens.  Iray preview works great, I don't really use filament.  What happens at the end of the day is that I have one or two lights that I can manage and a render that completes in a fraction of the time.  This is when, if I want drama, I add a spot; the render time goes through the roof (I always point the spot at the hair) the result is not typically very good at all (I'm no good at this), but I had a good time!

    Post edited by jbowler on
  • WendyLuvsCatzWendyLuvsCatz Posts: 40,101

    I have rendered twice, with and without shadows then used screen to combine the layers

  • realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28

    jbowler said:

    The default DAZ Studio spotlight is a "point".  That means the shadows are as hard as hard can be; select the light, go to it's "parameters" pain and check out the "light" sub-tab, the "light geometry" property.

    This can be useful; many photographers, typically, almost invariably, working in black and white have taken pictures with light that hard.  It's a thing; "dark", "noir" etc, etc etc.

    So change the "light geometry" to "disk" and make an umbrella; portrait lighting in traditional photography often used umbrellas to creat a disk from a hard light source.  The umbrella is about 1m and it's typically 2m or so from the subject.  It's a big disk.

    > I managed to achieve something good, but I thought I could improve the scene more with the shadows and lights.

    I'm no good at this so what I do is to work light by light.  I turn all the lights off (creepy, eh) then I turn them on one at a time and see what happens.  Iray preview works great, I don't really use filament.  What happens at the end of the day is that I have one or two lights that I can manage and a render that completes in a fraction of the time.  This is when, if I want drama, I add a spot; the render time goes through the roof (I always point the spot at the hair) the result is not typically very good at all (I'm no good at this), but I had a good time!

     In filament you can't modify the shadows, you only get hard shadows.

  • realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28

    Here I upload an image of the shadow scene, I don't know how to soften the shadow of the cube

    Captura de pantalla de 2025-03-25 13-18-06.png
    1304 x 617 - 187K
  • jbowlerjbowler Posts: 841

    realhumanartists said:

     In filament you can't modify the shadows, you only get hard shadows.

    Use emissive surfaces if you can't get the "built in" lights to work.

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616

    There's a 'Shadow Type' setting in the 'Filament Draw Options'. Anything other than the default 'PCF' will soften the shadows a bit.

  • realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28

    jbowler said:

    realhumanartists said:

     In filament you can't modify the shadows, you only get hard shadows.

    Use emissive surfaces if you can't get the "built in" lights to work.

    Guys, DAZ3D is difficult. Could you make it simpler? I don't understand what you're talking about. I've already tried the settings as you said, and there's no change. 

  • realhumanartistsrealhumanartists Posts: 28

    prixat said:

    There's a 'Shadow Type' setting in the 'Filament Draw Options'. Anything other than the default 'PCF' will soften the shadows a bit.

     I've touched everything, but I don't see any changes. How do you do it?

  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616
    edited March 29

    Hi realhuman

    Get the 'Filament Draw Options' from Create in Main Menu:

     

    Screenshot filament 1.jpg
    2004 x 951 - 287K
    Post edited by prixat on
  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616
    edited March 29

    About two thirds of the way down you'll find the 'Shadow Type' and 'Shadow Map Size' options.

    Increasing the Map size will get rid of those steps.

     

    Screenshot filament 2.png
    1709 x 1073 - 800K
    Post edited by prixat on
  • prixatprixat Posts: 1,616

    PCSS and 2048 seems to be enough for this render:

     

    Screenshot filament 3.png
    1721 x 1099 - 833K
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