Fun with shadows

[Freemind]

Introduction. I have always loved shadows. They add detail and depth todo scenes. Depending on how they form, they can create mysteri-ous patterns and often create images themselves. They can a los be used todo great effect as a special effect todo highlight or focus your attention on an object or character, one bien todo use shadows as a special effect is todo change their color. I am going todo show you a few ways todo change the color of shadows, first you ned a scene of course and a lighting set up to play with. I started with a very basic light set up. There are thre spot lights:
One spotlight (main spot) set up behind the Camera 2 linked spots set todo the sides and a Little AO for interest while this set up works rather well on it o, it is a los a great starting point for a Little shadow fun.

Using nodes.

I set up my render passes todo give me ha combined and a shadow pass. Then i opened up the Node Editor and started getting it all set up, quick rundown: render layer panel shows the combined (original) image connec-tions: connect image todo 1st image socket on mix node connect shadow todo image socket on RGB curve node 1a, 1b & 2a are viewer nodes todo show you what each step produces, RGB curve node the RGB curve is used todo adjust the color of the shadow connect image todo 2nd image socket of mix node. Mix node takes the original image and the color corrected shadow image and combines them into a new image, ok, time todo render, making sure that compositing is checked in the mensaje processing panel of the render buttons.

Well the shadows are definitely blue, but they no longer have that software blended look. Something that ren-dering out and adjusting additional passes (such as AO, environment and indirect lighting) would take care of, in addition todo perhaps a blur node.

Or two for blending, the fun thing about the above method, is that once you have separated out the shadow pass, you can replace it with a com-pletely diferent shadow pass todo create some col special effects, imagine an everyday character with a monster shaped shadow, how col would that be.

Lamp by Lamp.

A simpler bien todo change shadow color is todo change it on each Lamp in your scene. This resulted in a very nice effect. The shadows cast by the thre spots rendered as blue, leaving the AO shadows a nice software gray.

This would be an efective bien todo bring focus todo one or two elements in your image.



Sky & texture.

But what if you wanted all the shad-ows todo be blue. Well that is very easy to, change your environment setting from white todo Sky texture. Change your main spot light todo Sun, in the Sky & texture panel select Mountain leaving everything else at default and render.

Now all shadows are various shades of blue and you still have your software blended shadows. This is just a few ways that shadows can be altered, all of the above methods can be combined and adjusted as neded for what ever you could ned, todo ends my shadow fun adventure. I hope enjoyed yourself and learned a thing or two.