Shadows

[Simon Edmondson]

I made a building for a friends live action short. The time has come o composit it into the footage, someone else is doing this in After Effects but, needs me to supply a suitable render to work on.

 

I am using v13 ( although I have V14 I have yet to install it).

how do I render a file for compositing were I can put the shadows on a seperate Alpha channel or is this not possible ?

regards

simon

[HomeSlice]

Set your building on a ground plane.

Make sure it is set it to "Cast Shadows".

Set the ground plane to "Receive Shadows" and "Shadow Only"

Make sure the Alpha Buffer is set to ON in the camera properties (the camera in the folder, not the camera shortcut in the chor - you can't set it in a camera shortcut)

Render to TGA.

[Simon Edmondson]

Set your building on a ground plane.

Make sure it is set it to "Cast Shadows".

Set the ground plane to "Receive Shadows" and "Shadow Only"

Make sure the Alpha Buffer is set to ON in the camera properties (the camera in the folder, not the camera shortcut in the chor - you can't set it in a camera shortcut)

Render to TGA.

 

 

Thank you very much indeed I shall pursue that immeadiately.

Cheers

simon

[Simon Edmondson]

Set your building on a ground plane.

Make sure it is set it to "Cast Shadows".

Set the ground plane to "Receive Shadows" and "Shadow Only"

Make sure the Alpha Buffer is set to ON in the camera properties (the camera in the folder, not the camera shortcut in the chor - you can't set it in a camera shortcut)

Render to TGA.

 

 

Homeslice

I went away and tried it but had a beast of a time.

 

I tried it on two computers both with the same result....

It locked uo the render before anything happened. 18 hours to render less than 1% equates to lockup when, in 'normal' mode, its taking 3 mins per pass ?

I know its possible because I've done it before ( about 18months ago ) but its proving elusive now.

Back to the mouse tomorrow.

 

regards

simon

 

Ps

Both machines running XP with service pack three installed and over 1GB of Ram ( I appreciated these are a bit dated but, needs must, when it comes to finances )

[robcat2075]

Something else is wrong, shadow catching isn't a big render hit.

[robcat2075]

It used to be that you could just check the shadow buffer ON and you'd get a separate TGA with the shadow image in it. But now you need to do a 2nd pass

 

Here would be the normal settings to render the object and ground all that as usual:

 

 

 

But if you want separate shadows for compositing elsewhere, do this render for just the object and its alpha channel:

 

 

 

 

And this render for just the shadow which is captured in the alpha channel of what appear to be a blank image:

 

 

 

 

Notice I haven't turned the Ground object OFF in either case, it is hidden automatically.

 

 

 

Rendering to OpenEXR can get you all these elements in one pass. I think Fuchur has put up a tut on using A:M's compositing with OpenEXR renders.

[Simon Edmondson]

It used to be that you could just check the shadow buffer ON and you'd get a separate TGA with the shadow image in it. But now you need to do a 2nd pass

 

Here would be the normal settings to render the object and ground all that as usual:

 

[Robert

 

Thank you very much indeed for that. I shall go and try it this afternoon.

Thank you.

simon

[Simon Edmondson]

Robert

 

Thank you very much indeed. I finally got it done. I think the mistake I was making- that was causing all the trouble _ was having the other objects in the scene selected for "shadows Only" as well (?)

Thanks to you and Homeslice for your help. Much appreciated.

 

Champion ( as they used to say in my home area, circa 1970's )

Simon