Inclination not working?

Don Anderson Jr.

Well I have tried from 5 degrees to 90 degrees. Nothing seems to change the shadows.

Am I missing something. Effects on, active lighting on.

Even the active lighting parameters don't want to work. Blur and transparency nil, zip, nada.

Azimuth works.

Loopysue

What are the exact circumstances? Which shadow effects are you using, or are you talking about roof shading?

Don Anderson Jr.

Just the global sun off of the normal buildings on the symbols layer.

Monsen

These values and their use can be a bit hard to understand, so let me throw in some explanations and see if that clears things up. Let me know if things still doesn't seem to work as expected after taking this into account.

• Inclination is only used for roof shading, not the shadows cast from the buildings. No matter what you set for inclination, the length of the shadows will be the same, but (assuming you use a city style that supports shading - most do) you should see a bit variation in the shading of the roof. This is combined with the steepness of the roof, so the actual effect can vary, but you should see parts of the roof getting lighter/darker when changing this, but it will have no effect on the shadows cast on the ground by the building
• The blur/transparency setting are only for dungeon lighting. It is possible to use in city maps as well, but it will have no effect as long as you don't have any configured light sources in your map, and the appropriate Point Light shadow effects set up on your sheets (which are not in city maps by default). Without this setup, these settings do absolutely nothing for your map.
• Azimuth, on the other hand is directly used by the "Wall Shadow, Directional" effect, IF the effect is configured to use global sun instead of a fix angle (It usually is). Thus this setting will change the direction of the shadows cast by the buildings.

Loopysue

Thanks :)

I was just about to say the same thing, but since Remy has already said it here are some screen shots illustrating those points.

Point 1: 2 shots, starting with the default inclination settings and then showing a really low sun such as shortly before sunset. The shaded side of the rooftops darkens.

Point 2: (Actually shown above at the same time). The Activate lighting panel is completely turned off with no effect in this map where there are no dungeon lights present, or the necessary sheet effects.

Point 3: The shadows on the buildings are "Wall Shadow, Directional" type, and respond to the Azimuth settings correctly if I reverse the angle from 135 to 315.

Don Anderson Jr.

Thanks for the explanations. I was absolutely positve in my own mind that the Global sun was what affected the overall shadow lengths.

I was so fixated on the shadows, that I did not even notice the shadows on the roof's themselves.

You guys go to amzing lengths to help us, can't explain how appreciative I am.