Cast a shadow and light question
 

Hey guys,

Shadow question:

I have a problem with my scene. I have made car in maya. But now i have found a great background of a road with some buildings on it.

I have put the car on the road of the background by using the background as a image plane. But you can not see the shadow of the car on the road because it is an image plane.

So i put a plane under the car exacly as the road is in the picture. So the shadow will fall on to the plane. But i want the shadow to be visable but not the plane. So it looks like the shadow is on the road of the image plane.

I have started to play with the attributes in the render stat of the plane like, primary visabylity, receive shadow and so on.. But i can't get only the shadow.

I hope someone can help me with this.


Light question:

The image plane i used for the car is one where it is sun rise. What i want is a like specular glow going from the back of the car to the roof of the car. Because the sun is comming from the back. And i am looking at the car form the side.

With what kind of a light, tool or trick can i get this effect?

Thanks guys.

;)

Click on the lights, go to shadow tab. By default, depth and raytrace is turned off. So you will have to turn it on. And if you are compositing the scene...for your ground image plane, put a Background shader on it and render the shadow and put it in Shake, AfterEffect or Photoshop.

Hope this helps.

thanks tvholicjames,

But how can i get only the shadow to render and not the plane i put under the car. Sorry for the dumb questions because i am totaly new to compositing.

right side of Maya. Render layers. It has been a year since I have done it, but I believe you select the gemetry and maybe the lights too and do something to the render settings. It has been a while. But it was something like that.

And if you use Apple Shake, plug in all the layers using IMult. If you are using photoshop, put the different render layers on top of each other till you get it right.

Hope that helps. Did you try the help reference in Maya?