Trees won't shadow

[wctucker]

Guess I'm not finding the right button, but my trees and plants won't produce shadows like everything else does. What'd I do wrong? I looked in Manual and CDs and coudln't find anything.
Can anyone give me a hand? Thanks,
Cameron

[louis]

Cameron,

Most of tree and plants that are images will not produce shadows in render mode. If the plant is a symbol it will produce a shadow in render mode. The images will produce shadows in a raytrace view.

[dgavin]

One thing I have done is to place a 3D tree in the middle of a tree image so I get the looks of the image and the properties of the 3D. You have to find 2 that go together. I think the one I used was an image of a tree with no leaves with the 3D with leaves. Looks like a tree in fall with most of the leaves gone.

[wctucker]

thanks Louis and Dennis. I'll try the 3-D/symbol combo to see how that works.
One of my issues is I'm trying to match the existing trees on the site.
Thanks,
Cameron

[Tim O'Donnell]

they also need something to cast the shadow on...ie terrain needs to be built usually

[WendyWelton]

I've only used the xfrog trees, but here's something I found with them - they are like cardboard cutouts, so they only cast a good shadow if the sun is more behind the camera than not. If the sun is coming in from the side - you might think you don't have a shadow, when what you have is a very skinny one.

Wendy

[Tim O'Donnell]

Wendy that is true as chief auto rotates the 2d image to face the camera, and as such the light source will sometimes be parallel to the symbol.... use the x-frog SYMBOLS rather than the x-frog images...they can be found at fixtures>Plants>~XfrogPlants...

[wctucker]

Do any of you guys (generic) know of places/sites that I can get a better variety of plants?
Cameron

[lbuttery]

Try his link http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/products.htm
They are free downloads

[WendyWelton]

Thanks Tim,

You know, I posted this under "suggestions" - a request to maybe give the cardboard version a second piece, invisible to the camera but parallel to the sun... and I don't think I got any response at all. I'm glad I jumped in to this post or I never would have known about the symbols version. I had a couple of shots that I had to forego because of this. No more!

Wendy