DOF render issue

[Tom Ma]

I have a plan in a scene that exists only for a shadow to be cast onto it.
I am outputting a multi-pass DOF layer, but need to have that layer excluded from the DOF calculation.

Anyway to do this?

[Craig Whitaker]

Are you against rendering a depth pass and doing the DOF in comp?

craig whitaker
vfx – mograph

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Do you want to have the whole layer excluded, or do you want depth information for the shadow? If the former I don’t think it’s possible without rendering twice. If you want the shadow but not the plane included then you could use the free shadow catcher plugin to catch the shadow instead of the compositing background tag.

[Tom Ma]

yes Adam, I was looking to exclude the whole layer, but having the shadow as well would not be an issue.. I will look into this shadow caster. thx