Shadows..

I was just wondering if there are any tutorials on how to make cast shadows..

wasn't sure if this was the spot to ask.. sorry if it isn't

thx

Well, SL doesn't support actual shadows, but there are a few things a builder can do to simulate them. It works better for indoor lighting situations, where one can give the impression that the light is coming from a fixed source, like a lamp in the room. But you can do it for outdoors as well, assuming that you want it to look its best at roughly mid day, or some other specific light angle.

On walls and the like, you can make custom textures that include shadows. These can be hand painted or created with a 3D application like Poser or DAZ|Studio. You can also tint textures on the underside of overhangs a bit darker, to get the right effect.

You can also create a false shadow on an alpha texture and place it under furniture and the like. False shadows are just a semi-transparent shadow pattern with fuzzy edges, placed on a thin prim just above the surface that the shadow is supposed to be cast on. A while back Torley Linden suggested that this would be a good type of texture to make available. So I made some square and round "shadows" that are various densities and focus levels. An object that is close to the ground casts a fairly dark, sharp-edged shadow. The same object, further from the ground, would cast a shadow that is lighter and more diffused at the edges.

If you go to the Design Center, Idea City, they have boxes of light and shadow kits and tree shadows freely available.

As always, there are technical answers to a question like this but they can only take you so far. You can buy pre-made shadows or shadow kits, and you can ask around for tutorials to tell you which brushes and filters to use in Photoshop to create something that looks shadow-like. In the end, making shadows (or anything else in the design realm) takes an artistic eye and a practiced imagination. You can learn a lot by taking art classes at your local college or adult center. Ultimately, though, the best way to get good at making shadows is to do it many, many times, and to make loads of mistakes. Helpful tips and technical shortcuts give you tools to work with, but the skill has to grow inside you.

yet. (love the ShadowRender experimental client)

Love the shadowrender client too .

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On-topic: depending on what they're used for "fake" shadows can look quite bad with SL shadows. A soft shadow under a couch isn't currently that bad, but a textured prim shadow on a tree looks quite off.

If it's going to be on something you sell I would suggest you have the item mod so it can be unlinked, or provide the shadow as a separate prim so it doesn't have to be used.

The easiest way is to use the chromakey type logic, ie green screen. I do this for a tonne of things. Just place whatever object you want to shadow in front of a prim 10x10 or whatever you need. Set the prims in the back to the plain texture, full bright, and use either neon green or blue, depending on whatever the object is colored. Take a picture of it, open your pic in Photoshop. Select the blue/green area, then select inverse, throw in an alpha channel, fill with 50% grey. You may want to do a 15pixel feather first. They colour over your pic with 100% grey as well. Crop it to whatever you need, set it to a 512 ratio pixel size, save as TGA. There ya go. You can either stretch the image in Photoshop, or just do it on the ground by your tree, house, whatever you want to shadow.

* I really want to say that 'copystanding' or 'screen capturing' people's work, to directly reproduce it is a direct violation of the terms of service. And I don't condone nor suggest this. I am suggesting making a shadow cast of a premade item for one's personal use and beautification of one's plot. Not copying people's items to clone or distribute.

I made my half-timbered home with alpha textured walls that include the windows.
I wanted shadows under the eaves, so I decided on diffuse ones like you get on an overcast day. My method was to make the basic wall panel out textured prims in-world, snaphot it absolutely face-on, full bright. I cropped the snaphot in Paint! and also I could move bits around easily in Paint! too,to make the different wall panels I needes. Then opened it in photoshop to do the shadowing and to make the windows and their frames. Voila! A 10m x 8m 2-storey wall that looks like it's made out of lots of prim beams and panels, all on one prim!

There's a nice little subsection on creating shadows, along with some textures on the CD, in the official SL book "creating your world" (by Aimee Weber et. al.).

My husband Gonkerplumb Flanagan makes scripted flexi shadows for his trees which grow and shrink and rotate with the position of the sl sun. They look as realistic as is possible with the current viewer. Check out the palm tree in the middle of my store, Baby Monkey

I was wondering if this script was availlable for purchase or not. Did search for that tree but must be long gone by now (just did check the date of this last post ... lol).

My guess is that the creator never intended it to be sold separately from his tree. The concept, though, is fairly simple. It would be an interesting challenge (and probably not too difficult except for the trigonometry) to write a new script that does the same thing. Take a look at and to get a feel for how you might do it.

lol... I've tried to make it work and I do understand the idea behind it but maths wasn't my strongest ever. So if anyone has an idea on how to fix this pb please let me know... maybe I'll be yours for ever... lol.