Shadow Catcher Tutorial
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Hi All, I've put together a quick tutorial explaining the use of the "matte material/ shadow catcher" in vray for Sketchup. Take a look and let me know if it's useful for you. If any suggestions to improve the directions that's appreciated too
http://charlottesvillearchitecturalrendering.com/?p=494Andy
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Very useful Andy. Thanks a lot. Just as a note, you cannot use this method with the dome light currently from what I understand. This was a mistake I was making for a long time. Your image has to be in your BG slot.
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Thank you for the tutorial. It's the only tut for shadow catcher that I have found and very easy to follow.
Unfortunately it seems like there are other settings that influence the render of the shadow catcher and I was hoping that someone knows how to solve my current problem.
I am trying to render an object using vray 2.0 with HQ exterior (or any oher) presets, default lights turned on and a HDRI in both Environment slots.
The shadow catcher is set up and applied exactly as described in your tutorial.When I use the normal render I can see the plane + shadows while vray is building the light cache. After this step the plane disappears along with the shadows during the Prepass.
The RT engine works better. I still see the shadows and the plane has almost disappeared. However the render didnt update for over 10 minutes while preparing the global light manager. So this wont work either.
Any ideas on what the reason for my problem could be?
Many thanks in advance!
Best regards
niX. -
@nix1990 said:
Any ideas on what the reason for my problem could be?
niX - is the shadow in your final render? The prepass doesn't matter, it's normal to see the plane during the LC calculation. Can you post a finished render or an SU model?
Andy
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@valerostudio said:
Very useful Andy. Thanks a lot. Just as a note, you cannot use this method with the dome light currently from what I understand. This was a mistake I was making for a long time. Your image has to be in your BG slot.
You can use the dome light as long as you select the dome light to be invisible.
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@andybot said:
niX - is the shadow in your final render? The prepass doesn't matter, it's normal to see the plane during the LC calculation. Can you post a finished render or an SU model?
Andy
Hey, I just made a quick render with Low Quality Exterior Presets and attached it along with a screenshot of the model.
One more thing I noticed is that you can see the plane in the reflection even in the final render.If that doesnt help I can send you the model.
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Hey,
just writing to let you know that I found the problem.
Turns out that the HDRI was a bad choice for lighting. It didnt generate enough shadow to see the shadow catcher at work. Now that I use the TexSky for Environment Lighting everything works fine, see attached.
Best regards
niX.
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ah, good to know - so it was your lighting that was the issue. Glad you figured it out.
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