Hi All,

Question about lighting & shadows in iClone 5.5.

I built a room out of stock 3D pieces from iClone content. It's basically a cube with a door. I'd like light to only come into the room when the door opens (save for whatever "ambient light" I might set).

Problem is, whether I use point light or spot light, the walls, floor & ceiling do not keep the light out of the room.

I have light set to "self cast" and all objects set to receive and cast shadows.

The unlit side of the walls do get dark, so this appears to be working. But somehow light still gets into the room.

Any thoughts?

Thank you,
Bud

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iClone 6.21
Character Creator 1.2
3.07GHz Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 Pro (v 6.1.7601 SP1)
6GB RAM
EVGA GTX 970 (2 gig video memory)

Here's an idea. Hopefully it'll be more helpful!

In your lighting panel, make sure to set your ambient light to black. If you are using more than one light, make sure shadows are turned on for each light. Point lights cannot cast shadows. Directional and spot both have shadows.

This should get you the direct light component. That is, the sliver of light.

Bud,

I think the solution lies in the "Opacity" setting for your light.

See these two threads:

• Why does my light go through a wall?  <--- SOLVED...  SOLUTION IN HERE
• https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic190071-281-1.aspx#bm190107
• Shadows inside a closed building
• https://forum.reallusion.com/Topic192236-281-1.aspx#bm192314
• That thread will point back to the first one

Please post here and let us know if that helped or not.

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iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Thank you, Rampa!

Playing with this now. It definitely helped to know what settings I *should* have on the lights, so at least I could stop tweaking those ones. I found issues in my bias, causing light to leak around joining corners, too.

Still playing with it, but at least now I'm not in the dark (ha, ha). And I have the almighty "sliver" of light. Don't know why I was unable to describe it that way, but that's the perfect word. Exactly what I was going for.

I did find that once I start adding lights *inside* the room, then if I turn shadows "off" for those spots I get the effect I want. But definitely shadows "on" for all lights outside the room. Helped tons!

Thank you for your help,
Bud

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
iClone 6.21
Character Creator 1.2
3.07GHz Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 Pro (v 6.1.7601 SP1)
6GB RAM
EVGA GTX 970 (2 gig video memory)

Thank you, justaviking,

I did find one of my opacity settings off as well.

Also, just for anyone else reading this thread in the future with the same issue, I spent some time in "Quick Shading" scratching my head -- till I realized you really have to be in "Pixel Shading," but I've made that mistake before, too ;-)

Thanks for all the great info,
Bud

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
iClone 6.21
Character Creator 1.2
3.07GHz Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 Pro (v 6.1.7601 SP1)
6GB RAM
EVGA GTX 970 (2 gig video memory)

Bud, once you find a setting you really like you can save it as a setup for future use. I've found that very helpful as starting point for new setups.

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Thank you, Animagic,

I wrestled with the setup for awhile last night and got something pretty close to what I like. I then wondered how I would ever replicate all that effort in the other files I have that use the same set.

I didn't know you could save lighting setups. I'm about to do some iCloning right now and I'm going to attempt this. My other plan was to write down all the settings . . . so the ability to save setups would be a great time saver!

Thanks for all the great advice,
Bud

UPDATE:

Hey, that's pretty cool! It's been eons since I played in the light panel, so it never occurred to me to go back and try pressing the + button. Don't know why. So, then I went over to cameras and tried saving my own custom camera setting. You can do that too! Thanks, again!

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
iClone 6.21
Character Creator 1.2
3.07GHz Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 Pro (v 6.1.7601 SP1)
6GB RAM
EVGA GTX 970 (2 gig video memory)

That's kind of cool about iClone, there's always something new to discover.

To go beyond regular lighting, there's also things you can adjust in the Atmosphere panel for further tweaking.

You can then save an Atmosphere preset, which includes lighting, but also the selected sky and the settings in the Atmosphere panel.

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Also, when you are in the "Project" tab, look at the very top button in the right-hand panel. It is a "set default". This sets the default scent that iClone will open with when you launch it. So set your lighting, camera, atmosphere, etc., and click "set default". Now you will always start at your preferrred settings. Anything you set will be part of the default, so if you want it to start in toon shading, or with IBL, or with a ground plain, just set those things.

Thanks guys. Fighting flickering shadows right now, but when I get a lighting setup that works better than the previous one, then I save the setup, so this is a huge help.

Also played in "Atmosphere" with Ambient Occlusion, which added some nice depth, which was cool.

However, it also added additional flicker, so I'm going to table that for now till I figure out the flicker problem. Then maybe add it back in.

Definitely making headway. What brought me to this is I have the scenes and shots together for my short film. So now, I'm going back and fixing all my sins . . . and finding a lot! Funny how the sins don't seem so bad until you're ready to do a final render ;-)


Peace,
Bud

- - - - - - - - - - - - -
iClone 6.21
Character Creator 1.2
3.07GHz Intel Core i7 machine running Windows 7 Pro (v 6.1.7601 SP1)
6GB RAM
EVGA GTX 970 (2 gig video memory)