Overcaster

OC Innercaster

(OC_Innercaster.lsc)

This is used to replace lightwave ambient in indoor scenes. If the current camera doesn't have motion blur set up, the script will set up a requester where you can set up motion blur and anti-aliasing (Overcaster needs motion blur to work).

If there are no objects in the current scene, the script will add a null. This is because if the first object in the scene has sliders applied, the scripts will fail to apply the sliders plugin to the current mixer object.

When you run the script, a following requester will appear (If running from the hub, as many times as specified):

The Script will attempt to suggest you an unique name for the morph mixer control object, but you can name it manually if you wish. In this document, it will be referred to as the Indoors_mixer object.

The reference box should closely but completely surround your room. This can be done in a variety of ways.

1. The easiest way is just to use the "automatic" button in the OC Innercaster.
2. You can estimate the shadow area and set up the dimensions manually in the interface, ie. when your room is part of a bigger object. The settings are in meters.

3. The old fashioned way is to scale and move the shadow area object at frame zero so that it covers the desired area.

Shadow type and resolution, as well as intensity falloff can now be set. If the script is run again while Innercaster mixer is selected, these settings can be modified.

The 6 lights that fake the room ambient are named respective to their purpose: The Floor light (surprisingly) mimics the bounce light from the floor, etc. You will get better results if you set the color of these lights to the median color of the surfaces - in the above image the floor light was brown, the walls light yellow and soforth.

The Wall_Neg_X light is the bounce (radiose) light of the wall on the negative X side of the room ("Left" wall), and casts light in the positive X axis (From "left" to "right").

The strength and color of the indoors ambient can be controlled with sliders. Another option is endomorph mixer, found in the Indoors_mixer object's properties/deformation tab.

There are four slider groups: Ceiling, Walls, Floor and Global. The controls are quite similar to the Overcaster ambient ones.

You may wish to reduce the strength of the wall light OPPOSITE the window slightly (to half, maybe), as well as increase the strength of the wall light where your window is. This can't currently be done via the endomorph mixer as the walls are controlled as a group, but you can use the Graph editor for this - also, if some of the walls have significantly differing color, you can adjust the lights there.

These lights should normally use a very fuzzy shadow map, so they also create subtle shadows to the objects in the scene.

There is a tradeoff though: You will have to model your walls, floor and ceiling as a separate object from the rest of the room, and set them to recieve, but not cast any shadows (not even self shadow). If you don't prepare your scene this way, the shadows casted by the walls will effectively cancel all the ambient light, and you don't want to have this happening ;-)

Because of this, the shadow casting is an option with it's own little switch in the interface.

PlugPak 1.0 notes
Some of the features mentioned above do not apply.