Soft Shadows?

[Anonymous]

Can anyone give me any tips on how to generate softer shadows?  I've tried using different rendering settings but can't seem to get softer shadows.  I'm using Revit 2017 with a Nividia Quadro M4000. graphics card.  Any help is appreciated. 

Mike

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @Anonymous

Please try increase the soft shadow precision value. Enter a value between 1 (speckled shadows) and 10 (smoothest shadows).

What is your lighting scheme (Is it set to exterior sun only? )and check you exposure control setting, vary them to 2.0 to 2.5

Try altering these values and render again.

See the article HERE for control shadows in render settings. 

Please mark this response as "Accept as Solution" if it answers your question. Kudos gladly accepted.

[ToanDN]

See if you cab decrease the Sun and its shadow intensity and increase the Ambient light intensity. I know these are​ effective on Shaded views but I am not positive if they are for rendering because I don't have Revit at the moment.

Another old trick is to create a huge fake Sun but I have not tried it myself.

I personally like strong and defined shade and shadow so what you have is fine by me. Imho, soft shadow, especially the one generated by fake Sun light, is outdated and kinda cheap.

[Anonymous]

Tried creating a huge fake sun but didn't get very good results.  Still oddly had crisp shadows.  Might have been the size of the file on that one.  It was another project.  Thanks for the tip.  I'll try it on a smaller file and see if I get better results.  I've used this trick in Rhino with good results.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for this.  I haven't had a chance to get back to this file recently but when I do I will try your approach.  Looks like some potentially very helpful tips.

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @Anonymous

You are most welcome!

Good to hear back on the rendering progress and I'm happy to hear that you found the tips helpful.

I will look for out for more information on how to avoid crisp shadows and altering sun settings for the best output/image resolution and test the same.

Let us know if you have any questions and feel free to send us a sample of your image.

Looking forward to hear from you! Meanwhile happy rendering!

[Anonymous]

Okay, so I had a chance to open up a file and access the "advanced materials and shadows" button but this doesn't seem to give me any parameter to adjust the softness of the shadows.  Any further ideas?  What you mentioned sounds like just the ticket.

Thanks again.

Mike

[Sahay_R]

Have you looked at this?

[Anonymous]

I did, thank you, but it is my impression this only relates to non-rendered 3D views.  No?

[Sahay_R]

You are so right! Goes up to Realistic - and no farther.

Maybe this - 

[dgorsman]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Okay, so I had a chance to open up a file and access the "advanced materials and shadows" button but this doesn't seem to give me any parameter to adjust the softness of the shadows.  Any further ideas?  What you mentioned sounds like just the ticket.

Thanks again.

Mike

---

How many levels are you rendering to - only 5?  More "levels" of processing do more to blend in the edges of shadows.

Might help if you provided another picture which has a better illustration of shadows and indicating where you want to see changes.

[Viveka_CD]

Hello again @Anonymous

These advanced settings with soft shadows precision settings are only available when you select NVIDIA mental ray as the rendering engine in the Rendering dialog, and select Edit for the Quality option.

Revit 2017 does not use mental ray. As an update Revit 2017 now only uses the Autodesk Raytracer for rendering.This does not impact existing projects, but new renderings will use the new engine, and results may differ from what the Mental Ray engine produced.  

However the good news is that Revit 2017 has Iray (with a physical sun system rendering feature) and Vray (support for Revit sky and sun) as options for advanced rendering.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for that.  So it sounds like this explains why I've struggled with the previous advice.  i'm on 2017.  Can you maybe elaborate how this "good news" impacts me?  Are soft shadows still possible with the exterior sun in Revit 2017?

[ToanDN · Accepted solution]

No. Revit 2017 rendering engine does not have soft​ shadow. You are able to adjust it to give you a lighter shadow, but not the soft shadow that you are looking for.

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @Anonymous

You are most welcome.This has been an interesting discussion so far

As I mentioned in my previous post,Mental ray engine which supports soft shadows precision has been removed in Revit 2017 and has been replaced by Raytracer.

It will be good to watch out for plugins like IRAY and VRAY with their advanced sun settings.

It is good to see the rendering improvements for Revit 2017 HERE

To answer your question, the soft shadow workaround is being investigated by our development team.We want an example of an image of what they are trying to accomplish (please provide screenshot of what you used to do) that would help us recommend other ways to do the same.

[Viveka_CD]

Hi @Anonymous

I wanted to check back in with you on this post. How is everything working out?

On checking with the team, it was suggested that you modify the light and material accuracy settings.

1. In the Rendering dialog, under Quality, for Setting, select Edit. The Render Quality Settings dialog displays.
2. For Quality Setting, select the predefined setting to use as a starting point for your custom settings, and click Copy to Custom.
3. For Light and Material Accuracy, select one of the following:
   • Simplified - approximate materials and shadows. Lighting and materials are approximated and shadows lack details. This setting is appropriate for draft or preview renderings.
   • Advanced - precise materials and shadows. Lighting and materials are accurate. Soft shadows and soft reflections from semi-rough materials will be rendered with a high quality level. This setting is appropriate for high quality renderings.

   • 

Let us know how you rendering is working out. Thank you and we look forward to your reply update.

Please mark this response as "Accept as Solution" if it answers your question. 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your thorough response.  I'm sorry I can't mark this as a solution yet.  Just haven't had cause to go back into the rendering process right now and have a couple more pressing issues at present.  I'm attaching some images of soft shadows that I'd like to emulate.  Sounds like I need to maybe bump up the "level" of renderings.  I'm not sure I've ever bumped this up above 5 or 10.

[Viveka_CD]

No problem. Thanks for sharing these images!  

Please take your time, and send us an update when you have had a chance to look at these settings.

Let me know if you would like to share a file to test.

[Anonymous]

Okay, so I let the computer "cook" for several hours with a fairly robust computer here at our office.  We did a 25 level rendering and got some interesting results.  The internal shadow gradation was improved some.  Still, the ability of the rendering to show the effects of diffusion seems pretty limited. Does anyone see any possibility of improving this.  Another potentially wierd idea: If I wanted to improve the gradation of these shadows a bit without doing so many interations of the rendering process, I wonder if I could change the material properties of the various model objects (most notably the ground?) to have just a "tiny" bit of reflectivity to accelerate the process of light bouncing into the shadows.  

Anyway, my biggest concern is how to create softer edges to my shadows.  Anyone have a thought?

[Viveka_CD]

Hello again @Anonymous

Good to hear about your progress! Thanks for sharing your rendering study image! 

Since soft shadows seems specific to mental ray, we are testing few models to get a similar result. (Few variations for testing are shadow maps, layering techniques). 

You could try to modify the materials for controlling shadows and reflection features for individual objects and ungroup/delete interior lights.

Meanwhile please try rendering through the cloud to reduce some time on the process and and try modifying settings. Let us know if there is any difference through cloud rendering.

See HERE (Re-render settings & Adjust exposure on the shadow slider)