I made a simple test setup in order to examine the influence of deatils in the shadow casters on the shadow image. Therefor I created a scene where the casting objects are replaced by musgrave noise alpha maps where the amount of richness/detail can be adjusted. In order to reduce the complexity of the experiment I worked with one set of shadow casters and one light only in order to produce a “clean” result.

Then I iterated the amount of details in each shadow caster and rendered the resulting shadow image with Blender’s raytracer.

Version 1: inner caster: high details, other casters: neutral

Version 2: inner caster: low details, other casters: neutral

Version 3: mid caster: high detail

Version 4: mid caster: low details

Version 5: outer caster: high detail

Version 6: outer caster: low detail

 

Learnings

  • each individual caster has significant influence on the shadow image
  • the amount of detail is relevant, regardless if the caster is in the inner, mid or outer ring
  • more experimenting is necessary: the contrast between opacity and transparency needs to be investigated

Small extra

the shadowland machine is also capable of generating volcanoes!