Parallel Spot Light goes through object???

[Brian Jones]

changing the shadow settings would do nothing if you haven’t enabled shadows in the General tab of the lights attributes. If you’ve done that…

[Jon Herron]

Yeah I enabled shadows and tried, and just turned it back off. Its wierd. I did a test in a different scene with a spot and a parrallel spot next to each other aimed at a plane. Again the parrallel spot goes through the plane while the spot does not. Then I put a slim solid cube in front of two lights (just testing to see if the parrallel spot didn’t like the flat plane) BUT again the parrallel spot wants to go through the geometry. I dont know, anybody?? Cinema masters, gurus,…help

thanks guys

[Brian Jones]

Parallel Spots (round and square) make shadows here. Can you post a scene?

[Jon Herron]

Cant post, but Yeah same here with the shadow, BUT it seems that if you take the parallel spots enable visible light, then extend the outer distance, the extended light shines through?

[Ronaldo Montalvo]

that’s not what i get with parallel spots on an opaque plane. unless the material in the plane is transparent there is no light shining through the plane. do you see this in renders or just the preview gouraud mode? in the preview mode you see the light shining through to objects behind but it renders properly. maybe check the material settings?

[Joe Bird]

When you say visible light, I’m thinking what you really want is a volumetric light, which can be found within the same menu as visible. The volumetric light does require shadows to be enabled, but will displace the visibility based upon the shadow created by the geometry. Be aware that there’s usually quite a render penalty for using this feature.

[Jon Herron]

Yes! that was it Bear and I feel dumb. Thanks for that suggestion. So so simple, I was wondering what the heck was going on. Thanks for everyones help! Always appreciated!