rusty Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Hi! I've never used shadows only but now it can really help me! So, I researched it, did what I thought I needed to do but I'm not getting it to work. Settings Tried: Render to TGA and then to .mov Buffers: Alpha=on and tried off Shadows on Render Options: Quality Final Shadows on then tried off Everything else off Nothing in Alpha buffer or RGB channels I opened the TGA in PhotoShop CS3 and the .mov in After Effects 6.5. I'm using AM V14c Am I missing something? Thanks, Rusty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Bigboote Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Hi Rusty- Are you setting the 'shadows only' option on your object itself? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 7, 2012 Hash Fellow Share Posted March 7, 2012 The shadows-only workflow has changed a little bit since v14, i forget exactly what, but it was available in v14 somehow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
detbear Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 Hi Rusty... Try Jpeg and PNG format. Alpha seems to have some querks. Use the EXR output also because it has a nice shadow buffer. I did several things here really quick... You need to also set the "front projection" to on and mess around with it. William Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
detbear Posted March 7, 2012 Share Posted March 7, 2012 If you don't want to see your character, set it to "flat shaded" and front projection. To get just the ground shadow, without the ground.......set the ground to both "front projection" and "receive shadows only" to ON Use PNG and see if that gets your layered image. Oh and make sure the shadow buffer and alpha buffers ar set to ON. William Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rusty Posted March 8, 2012 Author Share Posted March 8, 2012 Hi Rusty- Are you setting the 'shadows only' option on your object itself? I wasn't!! Got all excited but, darn, it still didn't work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rusty Posted March 8, 2012 Author Share Posted March 8, 2012 Hi Rusty... Try Jpeg and PNG format. Alpha seems to have some querks. Use the EXR output also because it has a nice shadow buffer. I did several things here really quick... You need to also set the "front projection" to on and mess around with it. William Hm... I only have one model in the chor and I want the shadows it's casting on itself. A problem? I'll turn front projection on anyway if I can. Thanks for all the effort!! Rusty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rusty Posted March 8, 2012 Author Share Posted March 8, 2012 If you don't want to see your character, set it to "flat shaded" and front projection. To get just the ground shadow, without the ground.......set the ground to both "front projection" and "receive shadows only" to ON Use PNG and see if that gets your layered image. Oh and make sure the shadow buffer and alpha buffers ar set to ON. William So, based on the real intent of the feature, LOL, I have placed another copy of the model in the chor to receive the shadows from the original model. No luck yet but I don't know where the front projection is supposed to go, (using a normal scenario) it would seem like it would go on the ground (in my case the copy of the model I want to receive the shadows). Anyway toying with all the variations on options, settings and output format (btw jpg can't work for this as jpg's have no alpha channel). Rusty Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rusty Posted March 8, 2012 Author Share Posted March 8, 2012 GOT IT!! HOORAY!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted March 8, 2012 Hash Fellow Share Posted March 8, 2012 Another angel gets its wings every time someone figures out a feature in A:M Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
detbear Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 ACTUALLY.....you can overlay a jpeg shadow using Multiply mode in PS or AE but I agree that it isn't ideal.. I wish that at some point an easier method of separating shadows in rendering could be done. It would require a layered render option that would give several files for each frame. AS I mentioned before, the EXR output does this currently, but it isn't a straight forward process either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fuchur Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 ACTUALLY.....you can overlay a jpeg shadow using Multiply mode in PS or AE but I agree that it isn't ideal.. I wish that at some point an easier method of separating shadows in rendering could be done. It would require a layered render option that would give several files for each frame. AS I mentioned before, the EXR output does this currently, but it isn't a straight forward process either. This option is available from v16 on without EXR. You just have to set your format to TGA. After that, set "LightBuffers" to on and any additional buffer you want to and there will appear two new options called "Save Buffers" and "Save Lightbuffers" which should be set to "on". When you render now, A:M will save these buffers out as seperate files with a name like "xyz_ShadowBuffer", etc. You need to use Multipass to get these buffers out. In v17 there is a bug in this... I dont know if it has been around for longer so. I will create a bug report on it. See you *Fuchur* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
detbear Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Cool Fuchur.... That's great to know. I'll have to check that out. Thanks for posting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Bigboote Posted March 8, 2012 Share Posted March 8, 2012 Thanks for the info, Fuchur. Rusty- TIME2UPDATE Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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