Semi-transparent materials and shadows

TIG

And another thing...
A textured material using a PNG will not accept shadows even when it is not transparent at all.

hellnbak

Box-
Thanks for the tips, I'll check them out and see what they can do. Even if they don't solve my problem, maybe they can be useful in some other way.

TIG -
Not sure I understand. Are you saying that if I import a texture as a PNG file vs JPG it will not accept shadows?

TIG

No, a textured material will accept a shadow IF it has NO transparency.
BUT if the texture is a PNG it will NEVER accept a shadow.
[EDIT: to clarify - if it has a transparency layer set - even if all pixels are opaque!]

Dave R

TIG, I'm not sure I'm following you.

Here's a PNG image.
Cam Clamp.png

I imported it as a texture which is applied to a face.
Cam Clamps.png

It seems to be accepting shadows.

Or do you mean that if there are any transparent pixels in a PNG texture image, none of it will accept shadows?

hellnbak

I also do not understand. I imported the stone texture as a PNG and it too seems to have no problems accepting the shadow

Rich O Brien

Try a .png in which the pixels are transparent

Dave R

@rich o brien said:

Try a .png in which the pixels are transparent

Thanks. That makes it clear.

hellnbak

What's weird is how the shadow looks with different texture opacity settings -

72 percent
84 percent
99 percent
and 100 percent

Dave R

At 72% you're seeing the shadow on the ground. At 99% the texture isn't transparent enough to see through.

hellnbak

Had to really think about that but then the "doh!" moment happened. Never would have figured that out on my own, thanks for explaining.

TIG

To recap...

Materials with < 100% opacity [i.e. transparent] of any kind - plain-color/jpg/png etc - will never receive a shadow.
If they are >= 70% opacity they will cast shadows - unless they use certain types of texture file, see below...

Textured materials that are NOT transparent [100% opaque] will receive and cast shadows, IF the texture file has NO 'transparency layer' defined - e.g. it's a JPG file...

BUT if the texture file is a PNG, AND it also has a 'transparency layer' defined, then it will not receive shadows, AND also it will never cast shadows - even if the material itself is set to be is 100% opaque.
BUT if the material's texture is a PNG file with no 'transparency layer' defined, then it can accept/cast shadows, just like if a JPG file had been used.

hellnbak

Yeah, what he said

Box

There will be a test on this later and your score will count to your final result.