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  • Render object and its shadows only

    Posted by Chris Tarroza on October 23, 2013 at 10:25 pm

    I have an animation that I will be reusing over and over again but with different text. The camera move, all the other objects, lighting, etc. will all stay the same except I will have different text per video animation.

    I am trying to think of a workflow where I can render everything except the text just once and then do a separate render of the text so then I can just comp them together afterwards, thinking that I can save on render time.

    In trying to figure things out with multi-passes and object buffers, my main issue has been getting the shadows casted by the text to appear without the floor (the shadow catcher). Every time I turn off the visibility of the floor, the shadow casted by the text onto it also disappears.

    My main question would be how to render just the text and its shadow (with lighting and textures) without anything else.

    I am not the most experienced with C4D so if there is another workflow that would make life easier I’m all ears.

    I am working with C4D Lite and then comping in After Effects CC.

    Freelance Video Editor and Motion Designer
    Toronto, CAN

    George Wolstenholme replied 10 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Adam Trachtenberg

    October 24, 2013 at 5:41 pm

    Place a compositing tag on your text object and in the tag properties object buffer tab, check the box next to buffer 1. Then, in render properties, enable multi-pass rendering and add an object buffer pass and a shadow pass. That should give you what you need.

    You’ll use the object buffer pass as a luma matte to isolate your text, and then you’ll multiply the shadow pass over your other footage to add the text shadow.

  • George Wolstenholme

    September 27, 2015 at 5:41 pm

    It just helped me out. wish there was a material node for passes.

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