Q: Does the invisible man cast a shadow? (coz I need him to!)

marcussrjbates_b1589f87c6

Hiya peeps! Was wondering if someone can help me with a small issue...

Still fairly new to DAZ, but in my Poser animations I often found it a huge help to be able to render backgrounds separately from any foreground figures, for both postwork ease and potential repeat usage of backgrounds. Sometimes I needed to render the shadows cast on the background by the foreground figures, without the figures themselves being visible.

In Poser this was simple to achieve, setting the "Visible in Camera" tabs for the various foreground objects to "No" and Bob's your uncle! Your creepy, invisible, shadowy uncle...

So my question is, can I do the same in DAZ? I thought it might be as simple as setting the "Visible in Render" tab to "No"...but unsurprisingly this just mde the figure invisible in the render (who'da thunk it?) but no shadows....can anyone assist? Pretty please with shadows on top...?

 

Many thanks! :)

Richard Haseltine

It can be done, at least in 3Delight, using pwCatch (from the store) or a custom Shader Mixer shader. It can't be done in a straight Iray render, I'm not sure if you could set up canvasses to give a pair of mages that would composite to the same result.

marcussrjbates_b1589f87c6

As I wanna animate I avoid IRay anyway...beautiful results but way too slow! That pwCatch seems ideal (not often does a product description match my needs so exactly)! Oooh...on sale too...my fave kinda item...

 

Many Thanks! :)