Instantly Fix Low Poly Shading in Cycles with Blender 2.90 - Defeating the Shadow Terminator
Why Blender Stack Exchange recommends it
Blender Stack Exchange users link it when answering questions about dark triangles, banding or shadow terminator artifacts in Cycles renders.
Recommended by 2 people across 2 different months, 2020 to 2021.
What it is
A under-two-minute tip from CG Cookie showing how the Shadow Terminator Offset setting added in Blender 2.90 removes the dark faceted shading artifacts seen on low poly objects in Cycles. It is a short bonus clip from the channel's Digital Lighting fundamentals course.
What people said
Recommends Mehdi · 2020-10 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Shadow terminator artifacts issues”
Edit 2021-11-26: a better solution is available as of Blender 3.0, added to the answer below. Blender 3.0+ A setting called Geometry offset is enabled by default, hence the artifact should not occur anymore. The geometry offset value can be tweaked in the object properties Object Properties \ Shading \ Shadow Terminator . Geometry offset preserves the shadow's location and color, unlike Shading offset (previously called Shadow terminator offset in Blender 2.9). Further details in this video [LINK] . Blender 2.9.x In blender 2.9, a Shadow terminator offset parameter has been added under Object Properties \ Shading . It is set to 0 by default, increasing its value fixes the problem. Demo and e
Recommends Goblin · 2021-02 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “Dark tris and quads in random places when rendered with Cycles in Blender”
Thanks for taking time to help me guys I tried it and did'nt seems to work for me,eventually I found this video [this video] and corrected my shadow terminator and now it works fine
Cites Reverend Speed · 2021-08 · Blender Stack Exchange · on “What's causing these triangle/banding artifacts on my baked shadow texture, and how can I get rid of them?”
Deleted my comments. I did try the Terminator Offset [this video] but didn't seem to get great results. Are you using any subdivision at this point? What are your settings, Terminator Offset aside? Thanks for the efforts!