Shadows in Bryce
This was one of those "Bryce is driving me to drink" things so I decided to make a quick tutorial on it to hopefully stop a few others from going down that path. ;-)
Lighting is dependent on 2 different things - the Sky & Fog settings and the individual light's settings. Even if you're doing an indoor scene and the sky is not visible at all, the Sky & Fog settings will affect your lighting. Different sky presets have different shadow intensities. Because this affects *every* light source in your scene, you need to check the Sky & Fog lab and see what the settings are before you set up the lights in your scene. (I found that out the hard way! I had a Sky with a Shadow Intensity of 1. Needless to say, although I technically had shadows in the scene, I couldn't see them at all.)
Note: The type of light you choose will affect your shadows. The Radial lights shine in all directions at once, like the sun. The other lights shine in one direction and the area of light (and shadow) is dictated by their shapes.
1) Enable shadows in the Sky & Fog lab.
- Click on the Sky & Fog title (not the drop down area to the right of the text.)
- Click on the cloud/rainbow icon.
- In the Sun & Moon tab, second column, click on the Sun/Moon shadows. For now, put the intensity to 100.
By putting the intensity to 100, all lights that you create will have full shadow ability. I prefer doing this because you can also set individual lights to have less intensity and soften the shadows produced. If all the shadows are too harsh, you can always go back when you're done and globally change the shadow settings.
2) Create an object in the middle of the scene and create a light behind it, so you can see the shadow off to one side.
3) Select the light and hit E. This will bring up the light's properties box. You can play around with the effects for that individual light. Among other things, you can turn off the shadow for that one light. (If the Cast Shadow property is lit, click on the dot and that light will not cast shadows.)
- Intensity: 25
- Edge Softness: 0
- Cast Shadows: On
- Visible Object: Off
- Infinite Light: Off
- Color: White
- Use Gel: Off
- Fall off: Linear
Here's a few quick examples of what the settings do:
No Shadow vs. Shadow:
Edge Softness (100) vs. Intensity (90):
Color vs. Gel (I selected Procedural Gel, and used Steel Cage):
Note: the Gel is the same as if you hit the M box for the light.
Generally, you shouldn't have lots of light sources all casting shadows - with few exceptions there should only be one light source strong enough to create shadows while the other lights work as bounced light.
Hopefully this tutorial shed a little light into getting good shadows in Bryce. (Aw, c'mon, I had to say that!)