I am trying to create a shadow for soft surfaces

thenameisjoee

Hi all, 

I am struggling a bit atm. I recently got the Iray HDRI Toolkit, and I love the aspect of being able to create shadows with objects that aren't visible when I render. 

I render out PNG's of models for montage work. So I take a source image myself with original photography, create a person in DAZ, and insert them into the picture that I took. 

What the Toolkit is great for is hard and solid objects, whether that be a plank, platform, ball, curved surface, etc. 

What I am looking for right now is the same type of Iray HDRI shadow work, but for soft surfaces. I'd like to be able to replicate the shadow work for a foot "sinking" into the ground, such as on a mattress, but I don't want an object, such as a mattress, to show up in the render. Is there a way to accomplish this with the Iray HDRI Toolkit or something similar? 

Elliandra

Morning!
Not sure if this is what you are looking for but Studio has a built in layering canvas system for partial rendering options!
Check out the Canvases video tutorial from ARTCollaborations on YouTube, it's a two part series.
Elli

thenameisjoee

Hi everyone,

A few months ago, I posted a similar question but didn't include an example of the look I'm going for. I'm working on creating an effect where my figure appears to be "sunken in" to a soft surface, as if adhered to it. The posing is fine, but I'm struggling with getting the shadows right. I want the shadows to realistically reflect that the body is sunken into a soft surface, rather than appearing flat.

Additionally, I need to achieve this effect with no visible surface, as the final output will be a PNG file. Essentially, I'm looking for a way to create shadows that make it look like the figure is sinking into an invisible surface.

Is there any way to achieve this?

Richard Haseltine

Threads merged.

What you want is probably a shadow catcher that will mask off the "sunken" parts of the figure - but for a soft edge you probably need a custom shape for that, not just a plane. The Create Advanced Iray Node Properties file in the Scripts>Utilities folder will easily let you do the first half, but getting a suitable object to stand in for the surface may be a bit fiddlier - a plane primitive (Create>New Primitive) with a lot of divisions might work if you apply a Push Modifier to it (Edit>Object>Geometry), add a Push Modifier Weight node (Create menu) and use the Node Weightmap Brush tool to paint in the depression. You might also get somewhere applying dForce to a plane or cube, using the Geometry Editor to add a new surface around the edges and setting that to zero dynamic strength in the Surfaces pane, then using a Play Range simulation (Simulation Settings) and Timeline pane to animate moving the plane up to the figure, so that it will dent the surface in.