Shadow Mapping for Animated Objects

[Omar Ali]

Dear Dr Southall,

I am currently working on a Shadow Mapping solution for Moving Objects. In the current implementation of the Shadow Mapping, if I understood correctly, the Animation feature repeats the calculation for each given frame.
So for instance if I have a solar module, that I want to tilt from 0 to 30 degrees, it calculates the results for each angle. 

What I want to achieve, is that the angle is adjusted in each step of the calculation, meaning that the angle is adjusted for each time step.
Is this kind of implementation possible? Is there a quick workaround so I can make a dynamic shadow analysis?

Thank you in advance

[VI-Suite]

Hi.

Yes. Just animate the rotation of your solar modules in Blender over a frame range - if you want a constant change in rotation per frame you may need to set interpolation to linear in Blender's settings - and then set this frame range in the Shadow Map node.
Cheers

Ryan

[Omar Ali]

Hello Dr Southall,

thank you for your fast response. I think I did not phrase my question quite right. It is hard to phrase this without ambiguity.  The solar modules are animated such that they have an angle for each frame. My question is:
Is it possible to have the angle change within one calculation. For example, if we look at a timeframe of one day, the angle will start at -60° and move to 60° throughout the day. I do not want the shadow map calculation to iterate through every angle, but instead, I want it to change the angle at every step of the calculation. For instance, if we are at 12° clock in the shadow map, the angle should be around 0° etc. 
If I understood correctly, the shadow map tool will repeat this scenario for every frame, meaning that the whole timeframe is analysed for -60°, for -50° and so on, is that correct?

Right now, I managed to build a workaround with the radiation analysis, that iterates through the time steps and calculates the irradiance on the floor (light sensor) and saves the respective CSV. After that, I cumulate the results to create a similar heatmap as the shadow map feature. This works so far, but it would be more convenient to use the dedicated shadow map feature.

Thanks again!

[VI-Suite]

I don't think there is a way to do that simply with the Shadow map node, but if you do the parametric analysis as suggested for all possible module angles, you can filter the total CSV results so that you get the result with particular angles at particular times of day. A simple Python script could do that for you.

Cheers

Ryan