3
$\begingroup$

I'm very new to Blender (10 hours in!), and I'm coming across a problem I haven't been able to successfully google.

I have an object casting a shadow on a plane. I'm using an Area light pointing straight down slightly in front of the object, and Cycles for the rendering engine as I want everything except the object and its shadow to be rendered transparent. I believe I may have used shadowcatcher, but I can't find the setting for it, so unfortunately I'm not sure.

As you can see from the attached image, the object appears to be cutting itself out of its shadow and I can't see a reason for it. Even though the plane is set to transparent, I've set every texture option to 0 to get rid of reflections, in case that's what was happening, but that changed nothing.

Any help is very much appreciated, but if the solution is very technical then I'd be very thankful if it could be explained for a dummy ;)

problem image

Update: I have since asking reproduced the file from scratch (a number of times..), tried turning down every setting for reflection I can imagine, as well as turning off Glossy in Object Properties/Ray Visibility.

I have attached a file without my texture (business sensitive), and I could see the color from that reflected in the plane below. Thus, I believe it's some kind of reflection from the sides of the card cutting the shadow.

Improve this question
$\endgroup$
4
  • $\begingroup$ Can you share the .blend file? $\endgroup$
    – Sanbaldo
    Feb 7, 2021 at 9:47
  • $\begingroup$ @Sanbaldo Sorry for the wait ("I can bloody fix this!" - I couldn't), file is now attached :) $\endgroup$
    – Micke Alm
    Mar 9, 2021 at 15:28
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks for the blend file. Can you articulate more this: "the object appears to be cutting itself out of its shadow". I don't fully understand where do you see the problem. $\endgroup$
    – Sanbaldo
    Mar 10, 2021 at 20:01
  • $\begingroup$ I should be getting a soft shadow below the object onto the plane, but from what I can tell the object's bounce lighting 'cuts itself' out of the shadow. The highly visible line in the middle of the shadow in the original screenshot. The shadow itself is softer in the Blend file attached, but the same thing is happening. When I have my texture turned on (which is gold colored), I can also see that color reflected in the plane, which is what leads me to believe the issue is some kind of reflection/bounce light $\endgroup$
    – Micke Alm
    Mar 11, 2021 at 6:12

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.

Browse other questions tagged .