Choosing a shadow type

- Shadows are critically important to the…believability of an image.…Without shadows it looks like all of these…objects and figure are floating above…the ground plane.…They don't look like they're actually contacting.…We need to enable shadows and let's look at the…different types of shadows we can employ.…I'll select a light and then go to the modify panel…and up at the top in General Parameters, we've got…Shadows and they're off by default for centered lights.…I'll turn shadows on…and if they're enabled in the viewport,…then we will see shadows appear.…

Here there is a pull down list where you can choose…what type of shadow you want to use.…And the default is Shadow Map.…A shadow map is based upon a bit map…or a pixel based image that's projected from the light…onto the scene.…Ray traced shadows are vector based.…And they're based upon lines that extend outward…from the light.…So it's kind of like the difference between vector art…and a bit map.…If you create an Illustrator document, for example,…and it's made out of all paths and curves,…