dennisharoldsen opened this issue on Jan 28, 2008 · 12 posts
bagginsbill posted Tue, 29 January 2008 at 4:41 PM
Attached Link: My Shadow Catcher
OK try this. Follow the link to another thread. I posted a material there, shadowcatcher.mt5. I can't load files with that extension to the forums, so I added .txt to the end. You have to remove that from the filename when you download it.The material was designed to do a controlled color shadow catcher, where you are rendering with a background photo, and you want to make your rendered shadows look like the ones in the photo.
You, of course, will NOT be rendering with a background. So it will work a little differently, but I've tested it and it still works.
Load that material on your ground.
My instructions here won't make sense to you until you look at that shader and the instructions in the other thread.
Follow the calibration instructions, so that your ground renders black and white, with a good strong white where the shadow falls. Calibration is so the shader can learn what your light and shadow levels actually are. Once you calibrate, you won't have to do that again, unless you change your lights in any way. But for what you're doing, I imagine you're always using the same lighting.
After you get it calibrated, then turn off Calibrate (set it to 0).
The remaining instructions in that thread had to do with matching lit and shadow colors against a specific background photo. You're not doing that.
To adjust it for your purpose, put WHITE in the Lit color, BLACK in the shadow color. Adjust the Blending Factor between .2 and .4.
Configure your Poser background so you render over black. When you render, you will not see the shadow but its there. Render, and save as PNG. Load it onto any background, or just drag the PNG file into a browser to see it, and the shadow should compose nicely.
Its important to make good cutouts that you render over black. I don't mean that you have a black object behind - just render with background configured to black.
Using Blending_Factor = .3, I got this cutout you see here.
Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)