New to lighting, how would I achieve this effect?

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1

I’m a total noob at lighting, but how would I create a light that casts a shadow with hard edges when the two objects are close together, but a more and more diffuse and larger shadow the further away the objects are from each other?

Directional lights seem to not change based on relative object distance, spot light and point light do, but don’t get more diffuse

For context, I’m trying to implement an effect similar to the one at the start of this video: Solitaire Grand Harvest - Tripeaks Solitaire Grand Harvest|Level 102 to 104 - YouTube

Studying the video a little more closely, it seems like the cards appear to have full “brightness” even while turning over, like they aren’t affected by their angle relative to the light. But other cards still cast shadows over them when they fly overhead, so really not sure how I’d achieve that sort of effect.

Is the answer something like, write a custom shader?

2

Hi @vmwxiong,

That would require soft shadows rendered for dynamic lighting, which aren’t supported right now.

There is a related feature request logged for this, feel free to upvote it:

3

I think in the video you posted, the shadows don’t get softer as the cards are further away - the shadow is only more to the side of the card - which is an effect of the light coming from the side.

regarding the card not getting darker … you’d set up the texture of it to be in the emissive slot instead of diffuse - this way it’ll be full brightness.

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4

I tried the emissive texture idea, but that prevented the shadows from being cast on it from cards above unfortunately.

5

you could maybe then use the diffuse texture slot
but in settings->graphics set up pretty bright ambient color, and drop the intensity of your shadow casting light

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