Problems with Shadows in Element 3D

Report · Jul 25, 2021

I'm looking for a way to get a 3D object from Element 3D in a tracked environment with good shadow and light (sunlight).

I had a number of problems ...

Problem 1:

(In this example, the shadow setting is Shadow Mapping and I'm using a parallel light.)

If I put a 3D object in a tracked environment, it is very small, i.e. I have to enlarge it, but if I want to have a shadow now, I have to realize that the shadow only appears in a small box that is only partially differentiated by the Shadow Size Settings of the respective light can be enlarged. (The size of the "shadow spawn box" is independent of the size of the object)

Even inside this box, at the right angle (of the light), the box is slowly filled out.

Problem 2:

If I try to use a spotlight and use the ray-traced setting instead of the shadow mapping setting, the sharpness of the shadow can be adjusted, but as soon as I want to make the light so far back to simulate sunlight, my PC will so slowly that I can no longer work properly. And even if you ignore that fact ... as soon as I move the object a little further away, it is no longer affected by the light.

The plate that is supposed to catch the shadow is big enough.

Problem 3:

There is some kind of barrier that makes the ground plate disappear from a certain distance

This can be reduced with the camera cut off option, but it cannot be completely eliminated.

Problem 4:

With a spotlight, a huge area is sometimes created as a shadow and not even where it is important.

Most of the work works with the ray-traced setting and a parallel light, but in this example the sharpness of the shadow cannot be changed

I hope you can help me somehow.

Best regards Nick

Report · Jul 25, 2021

Really simple: Due to the lack of any form of calibration AE has calculated an unrealistic camera, which is nothing you can realyl fix since there are no options for scene scale, scene alignment and such in the 3D camera tracker. Realyl not much more to say than that. You will need to find a different way of dealing with this liek using another program or manually scaling the camera by parenting it to a Null and adjusting the FOV and zoom.

Mylenium

Report · Jul 25, 2021

The shadow layer shouldn't be showing up at all, apart from the shadow itself. Are you using the Matte Shadow material?

If not, try that and then just make the ground plane much larger. In the problem 3 screenshot, it looks like your environment has been left on default. You might get a better sense of integration by setting it to the one in a car park(?) with greenery around the outside.

To scale up the object, you could use the Create World Transform Null option in World Transform to create a null object to make it easier to control Element. This will also you to you adjust the orientation and rotation of the element world space to better match the camera.

Report · Jan 13, 2023

As mention before by Mylenium, "Due to the lack of any form of calibration AE has calculated an unrealistic camera,", shadows are wrong. My only suggestion is to try increase shadow Map size.