[Jon Emmerich]

MOSTLY FIXED: With more tinkering, certain scale values eliminate the edge defects entirely. It’s not a perfect fix as it limits what scale values I can use, but for what I need in the short term it’s fine.

[Jon Emmerich]

Thanks for the help. We’re getting there, but it definitely has to be absolutely clean. I’m trying to generate some animation for my company’s branding material, and it’s super specific / no wiggle room.

That being said, I fiddled with sub surface a bit and it helps a bit, as you said. Since writing, I’ve also mess with the scale itself, and that seems to be the major determining factor. For instance, a scale of 99×49.5 gets rid of ALMOST all of the imperfections. It seems that different scales seem to lock it in better than others. I’m guessing that since it’s generated by noise, certain settings make it, well, noisier than others.

I’m wondering if there’s a good effect to add into the mix that minimizes these little edge defects…?

Thanks again

[Jon Emmerich]

I guess the core of my question is this: can I take the 3d shadow information from a comp and layer it over other comps? Can I get the shadow info alone in its own layer?

Going back to my pushpin example…

I have 3 comps in play (actually MANY more, but for the sake of example)… 1. I have a fancy, pretty, render-heavy map of Florida with a camera flying around, 2. I have a pushpin that comes down and lands on the map (utilizing the same camera information so that its relative position stays in sync with the map), and 3. I have a comp that layers the two together (I’ll call it “comp3”). I do this so that I can render each comp separately, and then combine all the rendered pieces into the finished product. I’m not sure if it’s the greatest technique, but it doesn’t kill my computer and it gives me the ability to easily go in and make changes without spending a day and half to re-render everything after my client says “You know, it’s great. But could the pushpin be blue instead?”

In the pushpin comp, I used a single frame of the florida map as a guide layer. The shadow casts just fine there, but when I jump over to comp3, the shadow is gone because the guide layer is the only thing receiving the shadow. I’ve tried using a white solid “shadow catching” layer and setting it to multiply mode, but that doesn’t work because there’s nothing underneath it to multiply to… in comp3 you just see the white layer underneath the pushpin.

I guess what I want is another layer with just the pushpin’s shadow, so that in comp3 I can sandwich it between the map layer and the pushpin layer, creating the illusion that the pushpin is casting a shadow on the map.

Clear as mud?

Thanks again for your help,

~Jon