Light and shadow

I was happy with the effects I got from the test lights in a previous blog entry, but I wasn't satisfied with the shadows. Plus, I wanted the shadows from the bars to be really apparent.

First, I tweaked the shadow settings, opting for depth map shadows instead of raytrace shadows. This was simple enough, and didn't require too much thought.

I tried two methods of creating the shadows from the bars. The first, was to create another set of bars off-screen, and then put them directly in front of the light source, but it wasn't working very well.

The second method was by using a gobo. I attached an image of bars to the colour node of one of the lights, and this was the result:

It looked much better, but the source of the light became obvious because as you can see, the gobo effect seems to emanate from the bottom right hand side corner, instead of  being evenly spread. I tried applying the gobo to another light -- a directional light -- but it was too far away, and the shadows appeared much bigger, and thus weren't recognisable as bars.

I decided to stick with as there was no alternative, and it was the best I could do without seriously adjusting the camera. 

Anyhow, I was able to change the output colour of one of the area lights to create the illusion that the lights outside of the prison cell had been dimmed (I imagine prisoners aren't kept in total darkness so as they can still be monitored), while maintaining the nice shadows from the gobo.

I intend for the light to flicker and then fade, thus causing the character to react to it in the way shown in the animation tests.