Is there a way to create a realistic shadow of a character figure on the ground, as well as a background wall in Poser 7? I want to render my character casting a shadow of her figure on the ground so that it looks more realistic when I place her in the background scene I already rendered. Can Poser 7 do this? If so, how do I go about doing it? Help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you. :)

Funny that you ask. The ground does this by default, when you first install Poser.

Go into the material room for the item you want to catch a shadow, such as ground or a wall.

Find the "Shadow Catch Only" checkbox and turn it on.

It is not adjustable in any way, so you can't control the color of the shadow or anything.

But it basically works.

If you want more control, you will have to use my shadow catcher material. You have to do more than turn on a checkbox, but still it only takes a few minutes to configure.

Let me know if you need it.

Thank you for the tip. I've only had Poser for a few months and have no previous experience with 3D Art. I'm a total newbie to all this and have a LOT to learn.

I am interested in your shadow catcher material, if you would not mind explaining what it is and how it works :) .

I appreciate your help! Thank you very much.

Attached Link: The thread with BagginsBills shadow catcher material

Oh thanks bantha. That's the thread. I'm kinda busy this morning and didn't have a chance to search for it.

Isyl - the material was specifically designed to perform in-Poser compositing of floor shadows with the background photo.

It may or may not behave correctly for you if you want to make a semi-transparent image that you can composite outside Poser.

What you should do is use either a solid color background or a photo to adjust the effect in Poser. Do renders until the shadow looks like how you want it.

Then - this is important - to make the final image, render over black. This is a render option.

You need to do that so the resulting image does not have the in-poser background blended into it. After you export try compositing it with other things outside Poser. If the effect isn't to your liking, try to test-render with the background in Poser, make adjustments, then render over black again and export.

If this doesn't lead to good results, let me know. I can probably make a few modifications that would work better for external compositing.

bantha, thank you for the thread link. I'm reading through the whole thread to see what I can learn .

bagginsbill, thank you for being so helpful. I'm going to give your shadow catcher material a try as soon as possible. May take me a little while to figure out, I've just recently ventured into the material room and playing around with changing nodes and stuff. I still find some of it a little confusing :huh: . I'll venture back in there and see what I can do. I'll let you know how it goes, may end up having a few questions :blushing: , but I'll see what I can figure out on my own. I'll keep you updated. Thanks so much.

I must be a total idiot :blushing: , bagginbill, but I can't seem to get the shadow catcher material to work. I know I'm probably just not doing something, very simple and logical, right. I've tried it with the ground plane, a cloth plane and an imported background and when I manage to actually get something, it's just a black area across the bottom. I've followed the steps you outlined in the other thread about creating shadows, which seem quite simple, and still no go :sad: . What could I be missing or doing wrong :unsure: ? Do I need to add a special light or something to cast the shadow? In your pictures, in the other thread showing each step to do, there is a sphere. Is that something I need to use or is it just for an example? I've only had Poser 7 for a few months so some things I still find confusing, even if they end up being very simple once I've figured it out. If you have any ideas as to what I might be doing wrong I would really appreciate your help. Thank you and I'm sorry if I'm being bothersome in any way.

Hmmm. We have to start from ground zero I guess.

My sphere was just a demo- something to put into the photo and make it seem like it belongs.

The shape is not important. It was just something to demonstrating casting a shadow.

Show me a screen shot of your scene setup. You should have a photo background, a ground plane, and something to be in the scene to cast a shadow. The photobackground should be mounted on a one-sided square.

Use the Aux camera to show me your setup - as well as how it is viewed with the camera that is to be used for the render.

Without doing anything with my shadow catcher, just render the scene and show me that. I'm expectiing to see a photo background, which is partially covered by your subject, as well as covered up (partly) by your ground plane.

    1. Aux Camera

I added the one sided wall 1st and then imported the background. When I imported the background the wall became invisible even though it was still there. Should it do that? This is the 1st time using a primitive and importing a background so I don't know if that is normal or not.

For the rendered image you seemed to indicate that part of the background should be covered up, which did not happen. I'm afraid that when it comes to doing these things, I seem to have no clue as to what I should be doing. Can you help? Sorry to be such a clueless pain in the butt :blushing: .

Understand that eventually we're going to get rid of the ground again and also get rid of your background. We're just working our way up to it.

So the first thing is the basic setup.

Here's the aux picture. See my photo? It's on a one-sided square. I scaled the square to match the aspect ratio of the photo. My photo is 1024 by 768. So I made the square xScale=1024% and the yScale=768%. After eyeballing it a few times I decided to make the overall scale on the square = 500%. I then positioned it behind my figure so that the poser ground intersects with the floor/wall at the back of the room in the photo.

I'll show you how to set up the material on the square in a bit so you can see it in preview and render it correctly.

My camera is looking straight at the figure and the photo. I have a light from above (you choose how you want the light to be) plus some IBL.

You may be curious as to why my ground is visible like that.

Select the ground. The choose menu item

Display/Element Style/Silhouette. Try the other settings too. Get to know them. They're useful.

Set it up something like this. Most important - turn off the Shadow_Catch_Only box.

(Note: I'm using Poser Pro - there are some new things here - ignore them. They are not important to our task.)

Do a quick render. Make sure you have shadows enabled. I'm using raytraced shadows but any kind work.

See how my ground covers up the floor of the photo? See the shadow?

We're basically ready to do magic.

MAGIC!

The ground is invisible, except that it does does render where there is a shadow. Basically the ground transparency is driven by whether or not light hits it. That's all there is to shadow catching, and Poser has it built in.

But it is limited - we can't adjust it very easily.

Go to render options and choose Render Over: Black.

Render.

All you see is black like this. Now there is black and there is black but not all black is the same. Huh? Just follow along with me.

So this is what we see.

You will see the magic like you see here. The PNG was not completely transparent - where there was shadow, there is some opacity. This will blend with any background.

If, like me, you see the rendo forum in blue, then you will see my figure against the blue, with a darker blue shadow.

So those are the basic steps for compositing in Poser, or compositing in postwork, using the saved PNG file.

For most people this is good enough.

But you have no control over the color or brightness or opacity of that shadow. Still - it's pretty good right?

Practice this way a few times. Then, if you still want more control, come back and we'll substitute my shader.

I want to make sure you have the basic process down before we get into the really black magic.

I have to go to bed now and tomorrow I have a meeting in New York. I'll check back on your progress tomorrow evening.

If you think you've got the basics down, you can try the next step.

Load my shadowcatcher material on your ground. Follow the steps in the other thread for how to calibrate the catcher, then turn calibration off and render. It should work for in-Poser compositing.

Then you can try hiding the photo, and render over black, and save as PNG to see if you got what you wanted.

Or maybe - you'll find that compositing directly in Poser is all you really need to do.

One of the problems was my render settings. I don't usually check the Cast Shadows box because the shadows  on my character are too dark for my liking. Can the shadows cast on the character be lightened?

Well I at least got the floor shadows. What next? Anymore tips or trick? Thank you for being so patient with me!

A shadow is long because the light is low. LIght from above produces a shadow under the figure, not behind or beside.

Shadow intensity is on the light parameters. They don't have to be black. They can be lighter.

Also you can turn shadows off for any particular light on the light properties. For a single floor shadow, use shadows only on one light.
 

I just wanted to say thank you again, bagginsbill, for your patience and for all of the help you have given me! I really appreciated it. You are very kind for the time you have given me.