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[adonf]

Hi,

On what plane are the 3D shadows projected ? I made a couple of tests and it doesn't seem like it's the walk plane, or at least it's not limited to the walk area.

We have a scene where the character walks on a narrow peer and there are places where the main actor's shadow is floating above the water. Here's an example:


I think that in this case I can put a mask above the areas where the shadow shouldn't be projected, but there could be a more elegant solution that works in all cases...

Also, in another scenes we have shadows from trees that are draw in the backgound picture and the character's shadow doesn't blend well with those shadows. Can I put alpha information in the background picture so that the shadow only blends in some area of the picture but not all (that might be a solution to the problem in the other scene too) ?

Thanks,
  Olivier

[Mnemonic]

The shadows aren't projected on the walkplanes, they are just projected onto a flat plane at character's feet. But now that you mention it, it probably shouldn't be too hard to optionally use the walkplane(s) geometry for projecting shadows.
But anyway, the shadows definitely offer a lot of space for improvement as they are now.

[adonf]

I don't think the walk plane would be the best thing to project the shadows on, because it doesn't necessarily match the walking area (in my case the walk plane is narrower than the walking area). A dedicated set of polygons would be a better idea, and ideally they wouldn't have to be flat although that would complicated things quite a bit programming-wise.

Any ideas regarding the other part of my question ? Can I use alpha to designate areas where the shadows aren't shown ?

[Mnemonic]

I don't think the walk plane would be the best thing to project the shadows on, because it doesn't necessarily match the walking area (in my case the walk plane is narrower than the walking area). A dedicated set of polygons would be a better idea, and ideally they wouldn't have to be flat although that would complicated things quite a bit programming-wise.

That's something I was planning for the "real" shadows. The hidden geometry objects will provide additional attributes, such as whether they receive shadows.
(That is, if I'll be able to do the shadows properly, did some tests in the past and failed miserably)

Any ideas regarding the other part of my question ? Can I use alpha to designate areas where the shadows aren't shown ?

No, you can't, unfortunately. The shadows are projected into the scene, so I don't think it woud be easy to mix them with some static alpha info, without using stencil buffer or something like that.