Hello,

I'm new to A:M
(Well in fact I used ist 10 years ago - but the times they are changing...)

I have a very easy question but somehow I don't get it.
I want to make some simple animation, with a black figure on a white ground. So the figure is black and everything around her is white. but of course I want to see the schadows of the figure. So I made a plane for the Figure to walk on answitched the camera to white background. but always is something wrong. sometimes the plane is not perfectly white, but the shadows are there or, the plane is white but the shadow disapears. I used bulbs as lights
I tried also flat shaded and riecive shadows, with shadows only. nothing worked.
Any idea? That can't be so difficult!.

Thanks!
Florian

i would change the color of your whole model to black in the project work place. hope this helps

Welcome to A:M!



like this?

Click to view attachment

Use one Sun light and set its "width" to zero, set its intensity to 100%

Zero width creates a solid shadow rather than a receding one.

Set the Diffuse Falloff of the Ground to 0. (also set "Cast Shadows" ON for the ground, this makes sure that single thickness patches cause shadows on it)

Falloff determines how much an object shades when it is lit at an angle. In this case you want it to fall off not at all.

I also turned the Camera Background color to white so there would not be a blue sky.


Click to view attachment

A bulb light will work in place of a sun light if you set its Falloff Distance to a large enough value to extend past everything visible to the camera,

Thank you very much!
This is what I wanted to have. But what if I add other lights to illuminate the region better? It seems the other Lights destroy the shadows.
I also want to render it in toon mode - but I don't think that is a problem.

The background is already 100% white in my example. How much more illuminated does it need to be?

I want to render it with the Toon Renderer - without Lines. The characters are not black but orange and blue and I want a small gradient. currently it looks very flat with the Toon renderer. You can' figure out the parts of the character. The shadows are grey and not black (

If you want Black shadows on a white groundplane - try using a Klieg light (only), with z buffered shadows, where the shadow softness is =0, darkness of shadow =100%, color of shadow = black. AND do the following as well:

1) give the camera a rotoscope - use an image that is all white (or whatever color, pattern you want)

2) in options for ground plane, make the ground plane front projected, flat shaded. DO NOT change the diffuse falloff (in surface properties) for ground - leave as default (100%)

here is example of what the shadows will look like

In that example - I had set the intensity of the Klieg light to 0% - therefore the characters other than the ground plane are black.

If you want the models to be something other than black - play with the light intensity (make 100%?) - the shadows will stay black on the ground plane. If you want you can also play with Global AMBIANCE percent. (Global ambiance type= Global color = white, ambiance intensity = 100% or whatever works for you). You will probably have to tweak the balance between the klieg light intensity and ambiance intensity.

Post an image of what you have now, with your current settings/method - so that we can better suggest what to do

EDIT: Please ask any questions if the above is not clear, or you can't find where to change the settings.

Thanks for the help,
I found something sufficient for me - white background and Toon Gradient is there. Shadows are not perfectly white but gray but I think it looks better than black.

Florian