Hi all,

Is there a way to have a light cast shadows from one object, but not from another ?

Turning off shadow casting for one object is not an option, because then this object will not cast any shadows from any light at all (obviously there are more than one lights in the scene).

Any suggestions ?

thanks,
nick

Hey Nick, I’m no expert but it sounds to me like the way out of this is creating overrides for the render passes, so that you can match lights to objects and have each one casting the shadows as you want them.

Take a quick look in the documentation about overrides and if that doesn’t help, I’m sure somebody with greater knowledge will jump in to assist you.

Good luck!
Leo.

Open the visibility ppg for the object and look at the rendering tab. Uncheck casts shadows.

That will however not cast shadows from every light in the scene. If you want one of the scene lights to not cast shadows from just a single object then you might be better off with pass trickery. If you dig deep enough you might be able to come up with an override solution but honestly this is something I’ve never needed or wanted.

Hope it helps a little.

Hi Nick,

You can also make lights selective, so they only affect designated objects (or don’t affect those objects, depending how you set it up).

In the XSI Guides see Lights and Cameras > Lights and Shadows > Using Selective Lights.

J

Umm… yes that too haha. Doh!

Thanks for your replies everyone ! I know about and use multiple passes all the time, but I was looking for a way to do this in one pass.

Jamal, thanks for your suggestion, I had completely forgotten about selective lights (!). This doesn’t affect only shadows, but I think with some creative light design I can get there. I ‘ll look into it.

Thanks again :)

nick