X9 - Trees produced tiny shadows

[Tony_Sterba]

This is my first house in Chief X9  that I have modeled, and i noticed the trees and shrubs are not producing shadows the wrong way.  It is almost like the shrubs are at a 60 degree angle with the light source causing the 2D images to create slivers of shadows as opposed to regular shadows.  Is there something I am missing?  This never happened in X8 or previous versions.

[Alaskan_Son]

If you never had that happen before then you just got lucky and always had the sun in a better position.  The fact is that unless you are using 3D plants that those plants are nothing more than 2D images that usually rotate to follow the camera (unless you specify otherwise).  This means that if the sun is directly behind the camera (sun follows camera) or directly opposite the camera that you will get reasonably accurate shadows.  The further you get from those 2 locations though,  the less accurate the shadows will become.  With the sun perfectly perpendicular with your camera direction you'll essentially end up with no shadows at all...or maybe what looks like a single line.  

 

If you want more accurate shadows you'll need to use a 3D plant.