Maya 2012 Area Light Shadow.

[vetoPWR]

Hello, I have a typical diffuse->shadow shader that I am using to create a shadow alpha for AOV contribution in the embedded 2012 ray. I am finding an issue with maya's area lights when 'use area light shape' is enabled: When I create an area light and render it I am able to generate a shadow ratio by subtracting the shadowed render from the non-shadowed render, but when I enable the switch I get no contributions from the affected area lights. There seems to be a buffer created for shadows which I cannot access the data for, as the shadow does not get written to the beauty image until the render completes, but the buffer is not available for access during rendering.

I am going to look again at the setup, as this may be an issue of the MIA handling shadows internally, or some other creative wisdom within the processing, but would like any suggestions you guys may have.

Thanks, r

[vetoPWR]

So, am I really forced to have to use shadowFracAlpha to access shadow data on maya's provided area lights? This would require linking against maya.lib and would tie any in-house development to, what I would already consider, a mediocre and unreliable embedding of ray.

Thanks again ADesk.