Hey there!
So recently I've decided to "update" a few of my older renders with improved materials, lighting etc (updated my Switch render recently for example) and got around to attempting to update my Childhood Arts render. One thing that bugged me about this was that there was practically no shadow coming from the paper but I simply chalked this up to me being inexperienced.
Well I was right, but the problem is I still am. I've swapped between SRGB and Filmic, tried different types of lights, different sizes, different angles, with and without an HDRI, but nothing. I made sure that the light had "Cast Shadows" enabled but still nothing. Maybe there was something I overlooked or there's something I did wrong but I have no idea.
One thing I should point out is that it doesn't seem that flat paper seems to really cast a shadow anyways but I was having similar issues with other objects such as the crayons and other objects in other renders so I was just wondering if there were any catch all tips that I might be unaware of for this kind of thing?
Not sure if this will be able to help any of you in some way but either way I thank everyone for their time!
williamatics Damn, that was quick! I did that however, the paper you see in the render has a small amount of thickness, but even when I ramped it up a bit it still lacked shadows. Bummer. Thanks anyway!
I think there is some shadow there, but it's so small you can barely see it. Tried to replicate it in a simple setup with really thick paper and saw some clear shadows (I'll include screenshots). I had to make it really really thick though, so you could no longer call it paper, lol. I think if you make your paper unrealistic thick to test this in your scene that the shadow will be there. I hope... let me know if it worked :)
Extra thick paper:
Thin paper:
ssmurfmier1985 Yeah after giving the paper some extra thiccness it seemed to cast a shadow, I think it's simply due to how thin paper is, considering when I Google pictures of completely flat paper they don't seem to have a shadow either. I appreciate you experimenting in Blender itself, so cheers for that and thanks for your answer!