Am trying to color ray traced shadows… can only get shades of black.

I remember this being trivial in earlier releases… I think by using a shadow or light shader with shadow color parameter fields.

How do we do this now?

i believe Zerouni gives 3 examples in the Houdini On the Spot book…

time being short, i don't have time to fetch the book and go over the examples given.

good luck.

fgillis
Am trying to color ray traced shadows… can only get shades of black.

I remember this being trivial in earlier releases… I think by using a shadow or light shader with shadow color parameter fields.

How do we do this now?

Set the opacity to something other than grey (i.e. the Of variable inVOPs).

If you apply a basic surface and set the opacity to something other than grey you should get colored shadows (though it might not be intuitive - if you set the opacity to 1,0,0 the surface will be opaque in red, passing the green/blue light through - a cyan shadow).

mark

fgillis
Am trying to color ray traced shadows… can only get shades of black.

I remember this being trivial in earlier releases… I think by using a shadow or light shader with shadow color parameter fields.

How do we do this now?

Set the opacity to something other than grey (i.e. the Of variable inVOPs).

If you apply a basic surface and set the opacity to something other than grey you should get colored shadows (though it might not be intuitive - if you set the opacity to 1,0,0 the surface will be opaque in red, passing the green/blue light through - a cyan shadow).

is this an improvement on Zerouni's examples? sounds similar to example one, but more simple?

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and specifically in regard to:

mark
… (though it might not be intuitive - if you set the opacity to 1,0,0 the surface will be opaque in red, passing the green/blue light through - a cyan shadow).

couldn't a Complement VOP be wired in to make the shadow color picking easier?
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anyway, the 3 examples in a bit more detail than my earlier post:

taken from Zerouni's - Houdini on the Spot book. highly worth it. hope to see another one for H10. :wink:

pg 201 - 202

Example 1 uses 2 light sources, with one casting shadows and the other not… then you end up w/ the same “shadow color math” scenario that mark mentions.

Example 2 uses a custom shadow shader done in VEX. *shudders* i'll just recommend going to the book for this one. pg 202

Example 3 he states, "modify the surface shader so that the object becomes transparent only for shadows." again uses some VEX, but it's cleaner and leaner.

hope that helps some. good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions. Will probably go the custom shader route.

Too bad though. Like I said, this use to be trivial and included with the default shaders in earlier releases… <h9?