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.

---

[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!