Shapediver Shadows blurred cutting shadow off

Hello Guys,
Something is off with the shadows. I reported a while ago that the shadows where no following 3d logics but in this case it seems that the shadow map is a low resolution one and it’s being blurred to look softer.
the problem is that that is erasing parts of the thinner shadow.
For example before it finish loading you have a very pixelated shadow map but it is complete:


Once is loaded it is blurred but you loose too much detail. In this case you don’t see anymore the thinner elements of the pallet truck:

Can we do something about it on the API or is it something that you are working on within the shapediver viewer?

Thanks in advance
Paola

We are currently working on a complete rehaul of the rendering engine in the viewer. There are several reasons but the inaccuracies with shadows and ambient occlusion are a big part of it. That will take a while of course, but the goal is to prevent this type of problems in the future.

That being said, here are a few short-term solutions you can try:

  • Try playing with the lighting settings. If you reduce the intensity of the light, the softening won’t be as strong. In your model, I managed to reduce it so that the soft shadows are still complete (i set directional0’s intensity to 0.4). Of course, the overall lighting is affected and you might have to add or move other lights in the scene (for example add another directional light that does not cast a shadow).
  • There is a setting called beautyRenderDelay in the viewer settings, which is triggering the softening of shadows, among other things. If you set the delay to a very large value, it means the softening won’t happen. Now you’ll be stuck with the pixelated map, but to be honest it seems a bit extreme in your model, it might be a scaling issue. There might be some invisible geometry in your model that is taken into account for the shadow map. Make sure to only output what you want to see from Grasshopper. This seems to be confirmed by clicking on the camera button (zooming to the extents of the scene), which results in a camera position that is quite far from the object.

Thank you Mathieu,
I think I know what might be the problem with the scale.
We will wait for the new shadow improvements! :+1: