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Description

XShadow is a plugin for Max 3 / Viz 3 to create realistic shadows for Forest objects without using raytrace casting.

When you create trees using planar geometry, them cast ugly rectangular shadows. You must use Raytrace Shadow to get a good projection, but it's very slow. Also, exists other problem when using 'Trees looking camera', because Forest rotates toward the camera and the shadows change.

This plugin builds a perfect shadow for Forest objects in all conditions. It works as a Shadow Map and there are not problems with render time:

Versions

1.1 - Fixed a bug when the Forest object is the only object casting shadows by the XShadow light.

Installation

First, update the Forest plugin (Lite and Pro) to 1.1 version of greater. After this, only copy the xshadow.dlo to a plugins directory of Max.

How to Use

This is a shadow plugin (new in Max 3), and must be choosed into the shadow parameters of light. By now, it only works with directional lights (with spots and omnis it don't create any shadows for trees):

Under this rollup you can find the shadows parameters:

Shadow image

Opaque: Build the rectangular original shadow (from Forest mesh)

Opacity material: Use the opacity texture applied for each tree as shadow. XShadow searches automatically the material tree to find the opacity textures (Standard and Multi Sub-Object materials only).

Custom: Lets to choose a custom texture map.

Disable texture cache

The plugins builds a optimized cache buffer to increase the render speed. In the most scenes, it works well, but if you get some 'blocky' shadows or other visual problems, use this option to disable the cache (you can use it also to compare the render time in both states).

The other parameters works equal than standard shadow maps, and for non Forest objects the shadows obtained are the same.

Remember

Distribution

Freeware.