I have a slightly strange question! I am working on a prototype for a project which requires very sharp shadows. Eventually we will develop specific technology to do this, but for now we need a quick fix. We cant use lightmaps at the moment (and they probably arent sharp enough anyway) so what we want is a way to "cut" the shadow areas (by subdividing the target geometry) into the terrain so that they can then be vertex coloured. Does anyone know of a tool in, or plugin for, Max that could achieve such a result, ideally with a multiple selection of shadow casting objects and lights? Thanks in advance!

Stencil shadows is what you want.

Excellent! Is that a standard tool in Max? I am a Maya guy I'm afraid, recently sat in front of a Max licence and getting confused :)

Can you tell me how it works exactly? And dont worry - I'm off to RTFM!! Hehe!

I think he is talking about programming side of the shadows using d3d/ogl. If you have (i think) any of the d3d9 sdks, they have an example of stencil shadows.

No not in code I need it to do this in Max and export the re-cut geometry to the game engine.