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Shadows Around Transparent Material

by Rob Grubb · in Technical Issues · 08/25/2008 (10:30 pm) · 3 replies

This is probably a long shot, but is there anyway to cast shadows around transparent materials. The reason im asking is for tree leaves. In a tree model each branch has its own rectangle plane so if the tree casts a normal shadow, the trunk looks fine but all the branches and leaves shadows are boxes. If not how did GTA 4 get those awesome looking tree shadows?

Rob
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Torque Owner GI_JOEJK
#1
08/25/2008 (10:52 pm)
GTA 4 was built with a proprietary game engine. Unreal 3 can do this kind of, by using SpreedTree models, but they still fall short.

I don't think that TGEA can do this, I may be wrong though, but I wouldn't bet on it.

Rob Grubb
#2
08/26/2008 (3:08 am)
Hey from looking at this screen shot http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?set_albumName=album72&id=24_G&option=com_gallery&Itemid=55&include=view_photo.php of a game made with the OGRE3d rendering pipeline i dont see why TGEA cant do it? See the shadow cast in front of the girl from the trees above.

Anybody done this in TGEA?

Associate David Montgomery-Blake
David MontgomeryBlake
#3
08/26/2008 (7:05 am)
Often times engines fake it with projectors as well, projecting the shadows of the leaves and changing the alpha value of the image to make it appear more as a soft or hard shadow.