United3dArtists Archive

I hope this wasn't covered before. It's a way to achieve a fake ambient occlusion look to models in the D3D window. This can be used to add a bit of grunge or a bit more realistic lighting to a model. It softens edges, giving the impression rounded edges with more polygons.

After: Before: It causes the shadows to "bleed" into seams and corners somewhat uniformly regardless of the direction of the light shadow. Hope it's useful

Is the trick to change the filter size of a spotlight?

Yes that's it, but you need to give it enough samples and a big enough shadow map. Otherwise the effect is too weak to notice. I got the idea from a post at the Blender forum a long time ago explaining how to do the same thing in Blender.

For comparison, here is a snapshot of the default settings when I make a new spotlight.

Thats a nice trick, The only downside is it wont lit the whole scene and also the spotlight doesn't have a widget hard to rotate. maybe you can try using a cornell box scene.

I can get a similar effect with a directional light for a larger area (maybe enough for a whole scene). I have to use more samples and a bigger shadow map (not surprising). A good challenge DarkScythe! I'll keep tinkering.

Yeah, about the lack of a friendly widget on the spot. It's irritating. I usually parent the spot to a box and use the box's widget.

Whoa, I just saw Clinton's spot widget. Thanks Clinton!