Sharper shadows

Question

Howdy, I've gone back and looked at the lighting tutorial but it appears all my shadows have softened and they don't
wanna appear crisp and silhouetted like they do in the tutorial but I've only now realized this is a problem while baking shadows in:

Any advice?

Answer 1 · 2024-09-09T22:10:42Z

Omar Domenech replied September 9, 2024 10:10pm

Solution

Soft or crisp shadows are achieved with the radius setting on a light:

The bigger the light source, the softer the shadow, the smaller the light source the sharper the shadow. And also you have to let the render engine clear the image before it stops looking all fuzzy.

If your shadows are coming from an HDRI, you have to find on where the sun or the light source casts sharper shadows. You can usually tell in the thumbnail of the HDRI how the shadows will be.

1 love

Answer 2 · 2024-09-09T23:29:52Z

b

replied September 9, 2024 11:29pm

Gotcha, I will write that down. If I recall correctly though, Kent used a Sun light in the Adding Sunlight and Atmospheric Fog lesson, and with the Sun there's no option to change the radius. That's where I'm confused, so I'm wondering if there's a workaround for that? I'm also using blender 4.1 so maybe an update changed it around.

Answer 3 · 2024-09-10T12:05:29Z

Omar Domenech replied September 10, 2024 12:05pm

Solution

For the sun you can change the angle. The lower the value the sharper the shadow, the larger the value the more blurry the shadow.

Answer 4 · 2024-09-11T00:13:44Z

b

replied September 11, 2024 12:13am

Thank you Omar! It looks better now. I also found it was partially due to the Count under shadows. I appreciate the help!

🤘🏻