[Bf-funboard] Shadow casting particles

[joeedh]

Robert Wenzlaff wrote:

>On Sunday 19 December 2004 23:55, J L wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>As we've known for ages, Particles don't cast shadows.
>>
>>This is ok for animated particles, but what about static ones? The
>>workaround is rendering the frame from several different angles and using
>>that for shadow maps. But the problems comes with animations.
>>
>>The main reason that this happens is that static particles can only use
>>Halos if they are to not appear as a fuzzy blob. So why not introduce
>>another type of material that are like Halos, but cast shadows and don't
>>glow.
>>    
>>
>
>The problem is that halos don't cast shadows (and considering what a halo is 
>supposed to be, this is quite logical).  A partical system (both static and 
>dynamic) with a dupliverted mesh or metaballs does cast shadows.
>
>I'm not quite sure what you are saying about the "fuzzy blob" part.  Is it 
>that the mesh corners show or are you refering to metaballs being fuzzy?   
>
>If you are using shaded halos to do something like smoke, you can always 
>duplicate your emitter, parent and duplivert a mesh to it, and set it to 
>shadow only.
>
>  
>
Halos are meant to emulate spherical volumetric space, right?  So just 
input to the raytrace the equation for a sphere to do your shadow 
calculation.

joeedh