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Non-PBR Shadows in Mantra


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Hi everyone. I'm in need of some rendering/shading guidance. I'm working on a scene that's mostly PBR. However I want to incorporate one of those long shadows that we often see in flat-design vector art (see the reference attached). For the sake of simplicity and style this shadow will only be cast on a flat ground plane.

I have four key aspects that I would like to achieve.

  1. Long-Flat shadow that is completely straight and does not expand with distance.
  2. The ability to fade out the shadow over distance without blurring the edges (see reference 1, 3 and 4)
  3. Full control over the colour of the shadow.
  4. Have the shadow affect material properties (such as roughness and diffuse colour) of the ground plane.

I've got some ideas of how to achieve all this however all of them are very compositing heavy and require multiple renders of the scene (which I would like to avoid). I would like to try and find a way to achieve as much of the effect inside of Houdini as possible. 

Is anyone able to point me in the right direction for an effect like this? I'm not that good when it comes to shading and rendering so I'm not really sure where to start. Any tips or guidance would be much appreciated :) 

flatshadow_ref_03.jpg

flatshadow_ref_04.jpg

flatshadow_ref_05.png

flatshadow_ref_01.jpg

flatshadow_ref_02.jpg

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Here is a simple attempt at that.

These kinds of effects are done with the camera in orthographic mode so you don't see the tall extruded sides. But the sides are still there to cast the shadows. Play around with the Shadow intensity value on the point light.

 

 

ap_right_angle_shadow.hiplc

Untitled-1.jpg

Edited by Atom
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Here is a revised scene with a platform placed underneath the font. The font and the platform can each have a different polyextrude depth. I also changed the point light to a sphere and activated Half Distance Attenuation, instead of Physically Correct. This allows the shadow drop off shown in the image.

Untitled-1.jpg

ap_right_angle_shadow.hiplc

Edited by Atom
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