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Character Contact Shadow

A soft, short-range self-shadow for where one part of the character blocks the light from another — hair onto the face, an arm onto the body. It keeps close-ups looking grounded, with no real-time shadow map needed.

When the shadow intensity is increased, this shadow area becomes darker as well.

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Enable it

The Dashboard does the setup for you:

1. Open ZLZ Character Dashboard → ZLZ Character Contact Shadow.
2. Add Render Features.
3. Turn it On.

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Parameters

Can be adjusted in the Render Feature settings.

Look

• Strength — overall darkness of the shadow. (0–1)
• Offset — how far the shadow reaches toward the light. Higher = longer.
• Max Range — only blockers closer than this (metres) cast, so it stays short and contact-like (e.g. hair → face).

Setup & performance

• Caster Layers — set to your character layer(s).
• Resolution — how detailed the depth buffer the effect uses is. Higher keeps contact edges crisp; lower uses less memory & bandwidth (edges get softer).
  • Full — full resolution
  • Half — 1/2 width & height (1/4 the pixels)
  • Quarter — 1/4 width & height (1/16 the pixels)
  • Eighth — 1/8 width & height (1/64 the pixels)
• Depth Bias — raise slightly if you see speckles on self-shadowed surfaces.