This is actually 2 seperate questions.

First, I would like to know if it is possible to render shadows out without a floor. I know that sounds odd... but I want to do this for a composition. If you render out a scene, you can save it as a .psd file, which will keep tranparency intact. What I would like to do, is have only the object and its shadow in the render, so that "all I have to do" is setup the appropriate perspective, render, then drag and drop the .psd into my background and the shadows are already there. Essentially I want a "render" of my object and its shadow. Is this even possible? Do you create a floor and render something similar to layers so that you can just turn off the floor?

Second, I want to create a studio type scene for an object. I want it to be inside what is pretty much a big white box. I want to test shadows and perspective and I figure this is the best way, then I can maybe import a background image to help with camera angles and such. In a studio, you usually have more than one light, but you want to keep only one (distinct) shadow (to represent only 1 light source) and you don't want the walls of the white box to cast shadows. So, what would be the best lights to use (can you turn off cast shadows on specific lights?) and how do I turn off the wall shadows? Keep in mind I just want this to be like a commercial with a stool in the center of a white room, pretty much equally lit.

Thanks.

Edit: Also, how come depth map shadow resolution doesn't match the image resolution. If you use 1024X768 as your image resolution and 1024 as your DMS resolution, the shadows look terrible.

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"We don't actually need to know that the main character has a past. All we need to know is that he has an objective and a lot of people are going to die and a lot of innocent inanimate objects are going to be destroyed and blown up before he can complete that objective."

Check the docs for "Render Layers Pass Control:".

...or read my old explanation:

https://forum.simplymaya.com/showthre...t=pass+control

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Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

It's not in the render settings... and I haven't changed the preferences at all. Am I missing something?

Attached Thumbnails

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"We don't actually need to know that the main character has a past. All we need to know is that he has an objective and a lot of people are going to die and a lot of innocent inanimate objects are going to be destroyed and blown up before he can complete that objective."

Missing something you are -- the entire menu is quite literally missing from your Maya... wtf? Should be just under IPR and above Paint effects. If that's Maya 6.5/7, maybe the layout changed.... I wouldn't know. Toon shader looks nice, but not worth the price to upgrade.

See, that's what I figured. I'm using 7.0 and I was thinking the layout changed, as it frequently has. But I looked in the documentation and it showed it there in the menu under "Render Settings: Maya Software tab."

I checked preferences, but the only thing under render settings is the renderer (software, mental ray, etc.).

I'm so confused. I've been looking all over for the settings shown in the free intro to compositing video tutorial posted in the free section. If I found those I would be fine lol.

Thanks again for any help.

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"We don't actually need to know that the main character has a past. All we need to know is that he has an objective and a lot of people are going to die and a lot of innocent inanimate objects are going to be destroyed and blown up before he can complete that objective."

Thank God for techdemos.

https://www.alias.com/eng/products-se...ew/demos.shtml

Scroll down to the "Render Layers" demo and play it -- it might help you out... aparently because they allow for rendering with multiple renderers at a time they needed to move the UI out of each renderer. Handy.

Awesome! Thanks for that. However, now that I understand where everything has moved and why, it seems much more comlicated to do a simple render out to layers. I'm really quite confused...

Maybe I'll look around for a tutorial specific to 7.0.

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"We don't actually need to know that the main character has a past. All we need to know is that he has an objective and a lot of people are going to die and a lot of innocent inanimate objects are going to be destroyed and blown up before he can complete that objective."

Sorry bout that...

When I get 7 I'll rewrite the tutorial, as that is a nessecary tool for production piplines like mine, and many others.

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Israel "Izzy" Long
Motion and Title Design for Broadcast-Film-DS
izzylong.com

I look forward to that. Thanks for the assistance.

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"We don't actually need to know that the main character has a past. All we need to know is that he has an objective and a lot of people are going to die and a lot of innocent inanimate objects are going to be destroyed and blown up before he can complete that objective."