Soft Shadows with Max5

by Daniel Buck
www.danielbuck.net

People pass up Max5's new Advanced rendering for other renderers like Brazil RS, VRay, Finalrender, and others. Not to say those renderers are no good (they are very good), but Max5 can hold it's own, to a degree. I'll be showing how to get nice soft shadows in Max5.

For these 'tests', the ball size will always be set to 5 ("generic units"), and a plane for the "ground" with a light grey color will be used.

Area Lights create soft shadows. Studio light setups usually have diffuse sheets or large diffuse lights set up to soften the shadows, to create a larger area for the light to bounce from. Create an omni light, and put it above the scene a bit. Turn on shadows, and set them to Area Shadows. This is what we get:

The shadow is quite grainy looking, to change that, go to the "Area Shadows" tab in the omni light, and change the values of the Shadow Integrity, and Shadow Quality.

1. Integrity=2 Quality=5 (default)
2. Integrity=4 Quality=5
3. Integrity=2 Quality=10
4. Integrity=4 Quality=10

JPEG compression is lowering the quality of the shadow a bit over the net, but you can clearly see a vast improvement over the default shadow settings when you up the integrity and quality together. I have found that Integrity=4 Quality=10 is the best practical setting for shadow quality. The higher the integrity/quality, the higher the render times. (I'll be using Integrity=4/Quality=10 from here on.)

To change the "blurriness" of the shadows, you need to change the size of the area light. Under the "Area Shadows" tab on the omni light, you can change the default light Dimensions.

1. 4x4
2. 25x25

Skylight is a word that is thrown around a lot, and all it basically means is light from all directions. just think of the sky (all 180* of it) producing light, from all directions. This is what a skylight does. You create a skylight just like you create an omni, just click on Skylight and place it in the scene. Where do you place it? you ask? Well, if a Skylight is light from all directions, does it matter where you put it? Nope, put it anywhere :-)

Before you render, you'll need to turn on Advanced Lighting. Hit "9" on your keyboard (or go to Rendering/Advanced Lighting), and select Light Tracer from the list. Now render.

At first render, the images is very washed out. That's because we have 2 lights both set at 1.0 multiplier. for the 2nd image, I have the omni/arealight set at .75 multiplier, and the skylight at .5 For some renders, you may want the over exposed look, but for now I'll leave it toned down a bit.

You can change the color of the skylight SkyColor by using the color picker under the Skylight Parameters. This is a really effective way of changing the mood of the overall image:

Area light shape can change the look of the shadow as well. (under Omni light, Area Shadows Tab, and Basic Options).

1. Simple
2. Rectangle (default)
3. Disk

Simple is used for light placement, to get the scene figured out. This renders with sharp jagged shadows, but it renders quickly, suitable for test renders. Rectangle is default, and simulates a rectangle or square light, such as a fluorescent light, and Disk simulates a light with a round bulb (or studio Flash Umbrella Reflector). At first glance, rectangle and disk might look the same, but if you look close, the disk shadows are a bit more round in shape.

There you have it, the basics to a few of Max5's new rendering capabilities! There is still quite a lot that I did not even touch on, so go ahead, dive on it and have fun learning! Art truly is about experimentation. :-)