LW - Shadows

[Anonymous]

Maybe this has been addressed before, I searched the forum with no luck.

Is there anyway to lighten the transperency (intensity) of shadows when using the lightworks sun object? My shadows are really intense and I want a lighter shade of shadow, but I know if I play with the fall off it kinda lightens it up but you get all those other shadowy profiles (multiple effect thingy).

The lightworks environment settings when related to sun in the photo realistic dialogue box (where you can set the sun temperature and all that), do they relate to the built-in archicad sun or the lightworks sun object?

Thank you for any and all assistance

[fuzzytnth3]

I take it you are only using the LW sun and sky objects? You aren't using ArchiCAD's built-in Sun or the dreaded Camera light!

For me setting the intensity of the sun to 50% and the sky to 40% produces a satisfactory result and using the default settings.

Remember Dwight's advice to colour the Sun a bit yellow and the sky a bit blue.

[Dwight]

It is important to be clear that the Sun Object is a lamp and the LightWorks Sun is the horrid built-in sun.

In either case, darkness of shadow can be mitigated by:
1: best: adding a sky object - shadows, yes.
1A: adding a manually-adjusted sun object that fills the shadow and casts no shadow.
2: worse, but can help the sky object, too: increase general ambient light - pick ambient color in the camera dialog.
3: float a general light sllightly off camera and above camera viewpoint - this isn't great, but at least you can control the color of the general light - yellow - unlike the ugly "do-I-really-look-like-that-when-I-have-been-drinking-AND-singing-AND-dancing?" camera flash.

Be sure to turn off the sun and turn on lamps and ambient in the rendering dialog.

[Anonymous]

Speaking of shadows - when I use the LW sun & sky object lamps for exterior renderings, I often see large "phantom" shadows being cast as though the lamps were aimed in a nearly opposite direction. The problem persists even though I learned the trick of re-opening my plan view and "kicking" the LW sun and sky so that they jump to the direction of my sun settings...

Does the height of the sun & sky object have any importance? (I've tried many heights & it seems to not have an effect...). I remember a post from a user who had sun "layers" for front, back & side views of a building... anyone know a better way to disable this feature?

Thanks,

Don

[Dwight]

please post this

[Anonymous]

Hi Dwight - it just did it again. Rendering is attached (pay no attention to the model - the image was generated to highlight problems with roof levels)

Sending a screen save showing plan with LW sun/sky positions.

Don

[Anonymous]

Screen shot