Shadow Render Pass
 

Hey All!

My project is to make a maya text on my table. I recorded it, tracked it, imported to maya...Working good. & now i am rendering 458 frames * passes.

diffuse
occ
shadow

I am not 100% sure in some part.
If i do an occlusion of my text "Detonation", does it need a plane under the Text??


My other problem is the shadow pass.
What is the method? Should I remove the Detonation text of the picture? If yes, where can i find that visibility button? :(

! I switched on the cast shadow


J

I'm still not certain about AO, but the shadow render works good!
Maybe tomorrow i ll make 2 different AO render & try compositing & comparing

My preference is to do a shadow pass without the Detonation text. If you look under the shape node in the attribute editor, you should see a section called render stats. You can uncheck the Primary Visibility. However if you do it this way, you'll need to render out the table and Text as different diffuse passes, that way you can put the text shadow inbetween the two diffuse layers. I personally like this method because I have more control over the shadow during composition.

If you don't remove the text during the shadow pass, then you can render the table and text together for the diffuse pass. As far as AO, you should be able to render out everything in one AO pass. I'm no expert at rendering though, this is just the way I personally would do it.

During compositing, I typically have diffuse layer at the bottom and set to normal, then the AO layer set to multiply, then the shadow, then my specular and reflection on top of that. I set my specular and reflection layers to addition.

Hope this helps a little. Good luck.

Sure it will :D
thanks!

I need to explain a little better because your letters casts shadows on themselves. So my previous advice isn't quite right.

Suppose you have a ball sitting on a table. A shadow pass with the ball visible will produce a shadow with the ball shape cut out of it (i.e. shadow looks like a crescent). This method is nice because you can put that layer right on top of your ball diffuse layer. To soften the shadow though, you'll need to use a brush or something to blur just the outer edges of the shadow.

A shadow pass with the ball invisible will produce a fully rounded shadow. Having a fully rounded shadow makes it nice in compositing because you can apply a blur to the whole layer and soften the shadow very easily and quickly. But if you try and blur the crescent shadow, then it won't work because the shadow will look like it's pulling away from the ball because the area where the shadow and the ball meet will be blurred.

With that said, I think it will be easiest for you to render out your scene with 1 shadow pass and with everything visible, but just make sure your shadow's edge softness is right before you render. Then just place your shadow layer on top of your diffuse layer/s. You can still adjust shadow opacity in post production and such :).

Hi
this is S R Swamy, INDIA

solutions for ur problems:


1. Yes, its need a plane under the Text, in comp u have to merge your layers with multiple option.

2. you have to apply usebg material to ur text and base plane and change use background attributes : specular color = BLCAK, reflectivity = 0, reflection limit = 0, shadow Mask = 1;

thats all u can get alpha out put for only Shadow

all the best.

by :wavespin:

SRS
swamyrs@gmail.com

Thanks guys 4 all the valuable informations. I saved it to my Pc :)