In the picture the sun makes a diffuse shadow on the interior wall of the poolhouse. I want this to be a sharp shadow (as would be the case in real life, with a full sun). Don't know if and how I have to change the wall material and/or the lighting (or whatever).  (the material of the wall is shown on the right panel, as "concrete")
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In Cycles, a sun lamp is treated as infinitely far away - only the angle matters, not the position. Other lamps have their sizes defined in blender units: a point lamp with size 1 emits light from a area with size of 1. But if a sun lamp at infinity had a size of 1 blender unit, the angular arc of that sun would be nonexistent.  Clearly, when you change the size of a sun lamp, shadows get fuzzier or sharper. But what does that actually mean? What are you changing?
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I have attached a screen shot of no light passing through the window. The light strength is high, and the glass material I think is good. Why is there not a pinch of light passing or traveling inside the room. In the image the window glass is all black. What is missing in my nodes, so that light can travel inside the room?
12207
I'm using a Spotlight on one of my scenes, first I planned to make the effect of the lightrays on other editing software, but maybe it's possible on Blender. It is possible to make a spotlight look like the image below? (also, I'm using cycles)  Thanks in regard! :)
12400
I wonder if this is a bug, or if I missed something... When a light hits tangentially convex surfaces with "smooth shading", the shadow on this surface seems to "partially ignore" the smoothness of the surface. Here is an example with a simple cylinder :    On the left, a cylinder with "flat shading". Everything's ok. On the right, the same with "smooth". We can see an edge, bad shadowed.  With or without the "Edge split" modifier, no matters, the edge is still there. The shader is a simple white diffuse shader with no texture nor displace.  I have to add a subsurf modifier with at least 2 levels, which will insanely increase the vertex count... And I can't do that for my project.  I hope someone already saw it, and have a little tip to share. Or if someone already know it's a bug, or a limit of the current Cycles renderer ?
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Tunnels being naturally dark may not be the most intuitive choice for a place to take pictures. But I love the '' work that artists such as '' are putting out and they're clearly seeking out places like tunnels, caves, garages... Dark places in other words, to create their works of art. Which brings two questions to mind:   How do I go about finding places that I can accomplish this sort of 'tunnel photography.' What are some techniques that I can use to 'paint with light' in my photography once I have found some locations?
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I have two concentric cubes, both UV-textured, and sharing a material. The outer cube has a texture that is partially transparent.   When I render the scene, the inner cube acts as if the outer cube is fully opaque, and no light falls upon it.  I'd like the outer cube to only cast a shadow for the opaque parts of its texture, rather than all of it.
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In experimenting with an hdr environment texture for the World (with Cycles), I do not see very pronounced shadows in my scene even though the image has an uncloudy sun.  I expect my objects to cast shadows because even though the sky is bright, the sun is much brighter.    For outdoor scenes, is it typical practice to use a Sun lamp in addition to the environment texture or am I missing some other setting?
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See how the image background fades with the black menu bar? I see this effect very often and I like it a lot. I would love a tutorial (either Photoshop or Illustrator) or how-to article but I don´t even know how to search for it.
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I'm having trouble recreating this material in cycles:      It's a solid glass bulb with a LED inside and copper threaded fabric which gives it a copper colored glow.  I'm not sure how to achieve a similar hue / glow and IOR.  Any pointers into the right direction would be greatly appreciated!  Blendfile:
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In most of my models, I usually end up setting a world background using an HDRI image of some kind or another. This has always been really useful for lighting in general or as a background for my final render.  But what if I want my model to look like it is interacting or touching part of the background? For example, in the image below that I found, the modeled objects look like they're part of the scene, and even appear to cast shadows on the ground. How can I do this?
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Warning: Total photoshop newb!  I recently got a cool image of my fiancee and I holding hands and showing off her engagment ring. The backdrop is the beach:    I tried to trace an image using a combo of the laso and magic wand tools to select my target. Then I used that to pull out the target as another layer.  I then pasted in a background gradient.     Ended up with a really lame photoshoped looking picture. Notice the white lines where I didn't get the arms close enough and the choppy spots where I got too close.    So what's my main problem here?   Is their a way to bet a better cutout? Is their a blending tool that will make the background look more natural? both   I tried a dozen or so tutorials I found in google searches but they just don't blend these types of images together in any of them. Thanks in advance.
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I am a natural light photographer that is venturing into studio/backdrop portraits at the request of some of my clients.  I have a portable studio for my needs with a white muslin backdrop.    I am using one (maybe two) Speedlite 580 EX flashes with shoot through umbrellas as lighting.  In my practice shots, I cannot seem to get a nice "blown out" white background without dulling my subjects (decreased contrast/lighter exposure on their face and clothes).    I am not a fan of seeing the muslin draped or crinkled in the background... although I know that's definitely a style... I will probably iron it but I can never get it perfectly flat and plus I need to transport it so it will get some wrinkles.  Also, what can I do to avoid any shadows against the backdrop itself (shadows created by the subject).  I do have them placed slightly away from the backdrop but kids sometimes move around.   Also if I am doing little children, I don't think having a small backlight would be practical (not that I have one... )
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Essentially I want to turn a material into a kind of night-light. For this character I'm working on, I wanted the crystals on him to glow in the dark... And I got them to glow using various shader nodes. However I can't find a balance that looks bright enough in the dark, and not washed out in the light. So I was thinking perhaps there might be a node that could change the light emission of the crystals depending on the amount of light from external sources. In truth I don't even know if this is the best way to go about accomplishing what I want... Which is to have only barely semi-transparent crystals that glow brightly in the dark and appear as solid colors with a slight emission  when in the light. The other question is... will something like that carry over into unity? Because if not I'd rather save myself a lot of heartache. Here's a picture of what I have so far:
98257
I am making an animation with a green background. When a lamp shines on my mesh, the background somehow makes the lamp shine on my mesh green as if the lamp was shining on it through green glass. How do I make this not happen? My mesh is opaque, has a diffuse BSDF, and is white. Thanks in advance.
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Have you ever notice the sunset's image in the sea? It's like long light path to the end of the horizon! I've attached a sample of this:     How can we explain this? I know that it can happen even in wave less sea or lake! Why is this path so continuous? I expected that sea should act like a mirror!
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I am a complete beginner to Blender and to modeling, and am taking a tutorial for Absolute Beginners to create my first house.  No problems creating the point for the roof, but when I select the edges to try and extrude out the roof and create an overhang, the part I have extruded turns a scratchy grey color.  Later on when I try to add texture or color to the roof, the extended edges turn the same color as the face of the house, not the rest of the roof.  If anyone is able to translate my poor description and help, it would be much appreciated!  Thanks!!
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How can I make make shadows blur as they get further from the object casting them?   I have set up a relatively simple scene witch includes two pots on a clay ground texture, and I am lighting it using an HDRI image. Here is my render result right now:    How could I go about making the shadow of the pots gradually blur more the farther it is from the pots?   is the HDRI i am using to light the scene.   Thanks in advance!