issues about shadows

[Evine]

Hi you guys, I wonder how to make the shadows not that dark? Just as shown in the attached pictures, I want to make a lighter shadows for the leaves and the bottle.

What's more, the shadow of the bottle in the target picture is an area of pure darkness, but in my rendering it's transparent because of the transparent material of the bottle.


And besides, in order to make a shadow on the ground, is there any possibility to place a mask map for the light or the sun, instead of putting a flower between the sun and the target object?

Thanks in advance

[romullus]

Regarding leaf shadows, they are dark, because your ambient light is very weak, compared to direct light. Also shadow's shape is significantly different from the reference, because your main direct light is way too close/too big. Make the light smaller, or move it farther away and the shadows will take more appealing look. Interactive rendering is huge helper here.

As for the transparent bottle shadows, you need to enable caustics(slow) in glass material. Without caustics, refractive shadows are just fake approximation.

And besides, in order to make a shadow on the ground, is there any possibility to place a mask map for the light or the sun, instead of putting a flower between the sun and the target object?

Bad idea. That's not how it works in nature and you'd have very hard time to achieve what you want. My advice is - just forget this.