Shaking Shadows

[Wisco Video]

I am at a loss, been struggling with this for hours. Have a look at this video and see the shaking shadow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccbl1RQm1zA

As you can see, the shadow is tweaking out, shaking as camera moves.

This comp is using classic 3D. Camera, the background blue (ocean), and spot light are in this comp but the map is a nested comp, also using classic 3D. The map layers are shapes created from vector layers.

Ive tried changing from spot to parallel, moving the light source, adjusting the shadow diffusion/darkness, turning motion blur off/on, different camera focal lengths, taking project from 8 to 16 bit, adjusting samples per frame and adaptive sample limit in composition settings, and much, much more..... no luck.

So frustrating. I am not trying to do some crazy stuff here

[David Arbor]

Your camera is moving too slowly, so you're creating judder. You're asking your pixels to move a tiny, tiny amount over time and that's just what happens. Try making the zoom more dramatic—maybe don't end the initial camera move so close to where you are now, and make the final zoom 'bigger.'

[Wisco Video]

David, thank you for the reply. I agree, when I move the camera fast (or if it is still) no shadow shake. But those are my only two options, fast and stopped? I need to be able to move slow, Im focused on this one country and will reveal map points

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

Effectively, yes, those are your only options, but you can still find a middle point here. Make the camera move more, but have the move take longer. It just can't end up at the same effective speed that it is now. If you make that shot 5 or 7 seconds instead of 3 seconds then you'll have more flexibility to move a little more. You could also try keyframing the blur/spread of the shadow to increase as you land so maybe the judder won't be so intense. But either way I would make that final zoom bigger, as you can barely tell the camera is moving. At the current speed you might as well make it stop completely.

[Wisco Video]

Here's a longer version of it: https://adobe.ly/2Qjs0C4

[Martin_Ritter]

Some suggestions:

Have you purged all caches?

No expressions somewhere?

Keyframes are clean? No strange speed bumps in the speed editor?

Have you tried to switch to Cinema rendering engine?

*Martin

[David Arbor]

The Cinema 4D render engine won't help here, in fact, it will only make things render slower. You're changing the perspective of the layer AND scaling it, so these pixels are making moves that just need to happen faster or be more dramatic.