Thea - Shadow catcher tutorial

solo

For the guys that pm'd and emailed me to understand shadow catcher.
Also a good representation of Thea's Interactive render ability.

[flash=800,450:1ytbw47g]http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=14870697[/flash:1ytbw47g]

thomthom

You say use Thin Film and IOR 1.0 and then enable Shadows Only.
Another video I saw said remove all material layers and enable Shadows Only...

This video @ 21:50:
http://www.thearender.com/resources/Thea_interactive_render_web/index.html

tomasz

Solo is still learning Me too. In general it doesn't matter what material it is, but I would go with the suggestion from the tutorial on Thea's page. It is 'safer' to keep the material just empty with no layers and use the Shadow-Only checkbox.

EarthMover

Man that IR is crankin' on your i7! Great tutorial and impressive showing of Thea. Silly question, but how do you get your HDRI thumbnails to show up in windows?

marvins_dad

Thanks - it really helps to see someone moving around the interface to understand where all the controls and boxes are!

solo

Adam, I installed an app a while ago but cannot seem to find it online, I remember it was free and works well.

Here is a screengrab of the info box.

The link is dead

It also creates thumbnails.

hdr viewer.jpg

EarthMover

Thanks Pete. I couldn't find it either. Did some searching and came across this freebie though - Sage thumbs - http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?t=746 Downloaded, installed and all is working well. My HDRI images are now visible.

Frederik

I don't think the HDRView is the program that will show hdri's as thumbnails...
(btw - you can get the HDRView here)

solo

I have XNview also, so maybe it's that app which is enabling my thumbnails.

pilou

It was not HDRSHOP ? seems the v1 is free

Frederik

XNview doesn't do the trick, but Adam's find works like a charm...

@earthmover said:

Did some searching and came across this freebie though - Sage thumbs - http://newsgroup.xnview.com/viewtopic.php?t=746

blair

The latest update cersion of XnView will read HDRI's as thumbnails (you can choose the thumbnail size),open them and you can save them as jpg etc. Now, if I could just figure out how to best use them in THEA I could take a little step forward.

http://www.xnview.com/

derei

@solo said:

Adam, I installed an app a while ago but cannot seem to find it online, I remember it was free and works well.

Here is a screengrab of the info box.

The link is dead

It also creates thumbnails.

The link is here: http://ict.debevec.org/~debevec/FiatLux/hdrview/
But I also use XnView

dtrarch

Solo

xnView is it to view hdr files.

dtr

solo

@unknownuser said:

The link is here: http://ict.debevec.org/~debevec/FiatLux/hdrview/
But I also use XnView

Yup that's the one, faster to open hdri's and show thumbs than both irfanview and xnview.

derei

@solo said:

faster to open hdri's and show thumbs than both irfanview and xnview.

Indeed, XnViev is a little slow, especially with large HDRIs (and most of them are pretty large).

whiterabbit

I do not see a "shadows only" check box in that pallet.

Frederik

@whiterabbit said:

I do not see a "shadows only" check box in that pallet.

This tutorial is dated September 2010 and development on Thea4SU has been tremendous during the past years...

I suggest you take a look at the model I've posted here where you can see how the shadow catcher material works...

solo

Yikes this is an old thread, when I started this my kid was in middle school, now in college, think about that for a moment.

Rich O Brien

I had a 1yr son when you did this.

Now I have 3 sons and grey hairs!