Shadows Come To SL
I was googling around some of the other SL blogs the other day, and came across an article by Pixeleen Mistral, on the Second Life Herald website. In it, she was talking about a notecard they had received at her organization, which had instructions for activating shadows in SL. I copied the article and pasted it to a notecard, so I could try it myself when I was online.
At first, I followed the directions EXACTLY as they appeared on this notecard, and it didn't work.
I then maxxed out my graphics quality to ultra.
After doing the debug console thing, and maxxing out my graphics quality, I had it: the legendary and elusive SL shadows.
I zoomed in for a closer look at my avatar, to see if I cast a shadow.
I was curious to see if the shadows would change based on what time of day I had my sun set to. I was also curious to see what would happen with alpha textures. I wondered if plants, which have alpha textured foliage, would cast a shadow that was faithful to their opaque areas. I noted that something odd seemed to be going on with my shoes.
The plants had shadows that were true to their appearance. This was what the shadows looked like when I set my sun to 12:40 p.m.
I then changed my sun to about 3 p.m., and the shadows got longer. Pretty cool, huh? The shadow settings were pretty laggy, and things off in the distance kept disappearing and reappearing. Also, if I lowered my graphics quality, the shadows disappeared. If I raised it back up to "ultra", I had to go into "debug settings" in the "advanced" menu again and redo the settings.
This is what I got when I tried to take an inworld snapshot with the shadows activated. I guess this is one of the reasons why the shadows thing still needs further development.
Some of the fancier builders have been including light and shadow FX on their textures, which elevates their builds to the next level. I personally prefer just some subtle shadowing, like what you would see in RL on an overcast afternoon. This is because the lighting conditions are seldom ideal for completing the illusion of light beams being cast on a surface.
When the light is coming from the right direction, the light FX on the walls looks good.
When the light is not coming from the right direction, or a believable source, then the light FX textures look odd.
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