Clipmap trees

[crojack]

I'm trying to render an outdoor scene using trees that are a clipmap, same idea as the grass in the indigo component. anyways, the tree comes through, but the shadow is a big square instead of the tree outline. Am I doing something wrong? I set the material up same as the grass.

[alexmeyer]

I'm pretty sure that's a problem with BiDir being turned on. Try turning it off and see if that works.

[lrsuser]

I had the same problem
Under Skindigo > Indigo Render Settings
setting 'tracing method' as 'hybrid' seems to take care of this.

although I have no idea what all these options mean...
It would be nice to know what 'tracing method' really means...or what BiDir MLT/ BiDir PT/BiDir Hybrid reffer to.... Is there an Indigo/Skindigo reference manual of soughts?

[Kram1032]

null materials have shadows, as if the whole transparency wouldn't be there...
It's due to very slow sampling. Many rays even get killed, before going through the mat, which creates shadows....
It's well known, though, and Ono promised somewhere, that he'll make them faster

PT: Pathtracing. Good for scenes, with lots of direct light (sun/sky) and uncomplicated materials (diffuse)
MTL: Metropolis Raytracing. Good for scenes with lots of indirect light (interiors) and complicated light situations (glass, very good mirrors, translucent stuff like wax,...)
Hybrid: tries to mix the advantages of PT and MTL. directly lit parts are sampled with PT and indirectly lit parts with MTL. Needs some extra checks, which makes it slow, under circumstances...