- This topic has 4 replies, 2 voices, and was last updated 4 years, 7 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
I am a noob in lighting so this is probably a stupid question. Some hairs have strands casting blocks of shadows under certain lighting conditions. Real hairs obviously don't cast shadows like a solid object. What can be done to avoid this? Change the hair cutout opacity changes the look of the hair. Moving the lights mean abandoning the shot.
I can't imagine what that problem looks like, I've seen some harsh shadows cast by eyelashes.
You can increase the size of the light to get softer shadows, but at risk of flat light, meaning no shadows to show depth of facial features and so on.
I've only recently started using mesh lights instead of spotlights. I think mesh lights has softer shadows than spotlights of equal size.
Also setting spotlight geometry to disc or rectangular gives softer shadows. Increasing spread angle.
This is why I use only fibermesh eyelashes. Hair is a different story though. dForce hairs just aren't ready yet.
So the only option is to change lighting. Anything else can be done on the hair's surface settings?
I'm not aware of a surface setting that would eliminate or soften the shadows cast by the hair strands. Knowing what the light set up is might help. The environment lighting as well as the scene lights. Can you post an image?
You can try deceasing crush blacks in tonemapping but that would soften all shadows in the whole scene. Would probably be alright for a portrait.
@Cage - I am a lighting noob and right now I am just messing around with light products to see how them work and have no idea what kind of light/hair combination produced such shadows. When I saw them I just abandoned the setup so I have nothing saved 😛 Thanks for the tonemapping tip because I am also a film noob having used point-and-shoot cameras my entire life.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.
