I'm trying to render an animation where only the figure's shadow is seen, not the figure. I would have thought that, going to the (Figure>Body) Properties tab,  unchecking Visible but leaving Visible in Raytracing would do what I want, but it doesn't seem to. My light and render settings are properly set to raytrace shadows, but the figure is not there (as expected) with no shadows (as undesired).

I have a good workaround, but I thought I would get some thoughts here first, thanks.

Oh, and what would be really super is if there is a way to use depth map shadows in the solution, for speed of rendering. Slightly OT, but I'll add that I have a 64 bit quad core with 6 gigs ram, and of  course dear Poser is the only one of my graphics programs that seems virtually unaffected by the computational power...it renders as slow as it did on my old machine.

oh, and BTW #2, I own Glow Worm, a (Daz?) rendering plugin which can render shadow (and many other) passes, but it's super buggy and off the table for consideration, as far as I'm concerned.
thanks
-E

it would be great if we would have a AO pass.

You probably worked this out already, but...

Unticking the Visible flag means that the figure/object/actor is completely ignored in any renders; i.e. it can only be "Visible to raytracing" if it is "Visible".

I understand that the correct rendering of transparency requires raytracing, so what would happen if you made the figure completely transparent and used depth-map shadows? I don't use depth map shadows myself, so I don't know if they respond 'properly' to transparent objects. Just a thought....

Oh, and you can do an AO pass. The Render menu lets you do separate passes, or there is a script that allows you to select just one pass for your render... I'm not home now so I don't remember what it is, though.

there is a script. but it makes a diffuse pass,specular,....
but not just an AO pass.

when i make a AO pass i just change every shader. but still it would be cool to have a setting

Thanks for all the thoughts. It's clear that what's really needed is discreet control of all passes, at the element / figure / object level. I can't  remembry if glow worm controls at actor level, but it does have all the passes...too bad it scared me off long ago with it's affinity for melt downs.

 Render in raytracing, set ambient occlusion on for the lights and turn cast shadows in the rendering dialogue of - then render shadows only and you have your AO pass.

holly s....

is this real? i am trying it now and it really is an AO pass
. is the rendering time longer? 

whats this a bug?

wooooooooooooooow