Catching Shadows
Doc Acme
Posts: 1,153
Does Daz Studio have a means of Shadow Catching so that info can be saved out as a separate mask?
Combos of Visibility & Render Vis didn't work. Perhaps somehow by using Canvases or a special Shader?
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What you're talking about isn't what's normally considered "shadow catching" which is something you can do with occluders when there's no geometry onto which shadows would to be cast when using an HDRI background.
Iray renders include shadows only as an inferred by-product of capturing light. Isolating shadows is like trying to prove a negative. In any case, "shadows" cast by a light source include not only the shadows cast on the ground, but also the shadows cast onto the occluding object by itself, dark side of the moon style. You can mask the object out easily enough with an alpha mask on an object node, but that just masks geometry.
Iray lets you make a shadow canvas in Interactive Mode only, so I did a quick test for S&G. It does not have a provision for only capturing light not cast in Photoreal mode. The reference is a normal render done in Photoreal, and what you get as Shadow canvas is from the same scene in Interactive Mode.
The shadow canvas seems not terribly useful, but I don't know what you're trying to achieve, so maybe?
there is an advanced iray nodes script for adding matt function which is shadowcatch to an object in the utiliies
LOL a DAZ studio manual would be great
Yeah, that catches shadows using occluders, but he wants to render shadows separately, not catch them.
I'll take a look. Seems like I found a list at one time.
Ya, no, I'm able to get normal shadow info. I'm trying to work out compositing elements to be rendered in Daz, to work with other elements that aren't. Nearly worked out the number of passes & layer visibility needs to get most of what I need. Being able to separate an object from it's shadow in the render comes in handy certain at points. This is for a 12-15 sec. animation so some elements come & go, others need to work both in front & behind other elements at varioius times. Still proof of concept, but looks promising.
Wasn't planning to but here's a bit of a hint: