Shadows and compositing tag

[Adam Trachtenberg]

You mean you want to isolate the plane with an alpha, or the shadow?

[Per Sverre wold-hansen]

Hi Adam – Sorry for being unclear.

The reason for the plane being there is solely for the purpose to get a shadow – cast by the object. I thought I could “remove it” (and not the shadow) by the Composition Tag.

The “end product” should be a PNG w/alpha holding the masked object and its masked shadow – The PNG is to be put on web-page. The shadow helps mimmic an impression of depth on that page – Keeping the page’s gradient backdrop.

PerS

[Adam Trachtenberg]

Okay, gotcha. The way I would generally go about this would be to render out a shadow pass and then multiply that over the background. But since you want the alpha the easiest way to do it is to use the free shadow catcher plugin: https://www.thepixellab.net/cinema-4d-free-shadow-catcher-plugin

[Per Sverre wold-hansen]

OK – I think I understand. However, “a shadow pass” is slightly beyond me. Your link, though, is very interesting. Joren’s “thepixellab.net” is one of my favorite C4D sites. Interesting place. I justed visited, downloaded, watched the tut – and tested the plugin.

Amazing – It works (in R14 Studio)! So this saved my butt. Thank you very much for your time, Adam!

PerS

[Simon Huang]

Oh, I just solved this problem just yesterday.
Download “shadow-catcher” and apply the mat with shadow catcher to the floor. Render as “PNG” file and alpha channel.

Cheers.

[Per Sverre wold-hansen]

Thanks for your tip – which also got from Adam. Works fine!

PerS

[Chris Holland]

Will this work with Cineware in Aftereffects ?

I am having a really hard time getting this to work. It just won’t transfer the shadow over

Chris Holland
Editor/Animator

[Cassius Marques]

if you want to get alpha shadow with cineware just set a white plane on c4d and make sure it gets the shadows…set an object buffer for that plane.

Within AE duplicate your cineware layer…turn on its pass mode to that object buffer.

Use that as a matte for yout main cineware layer that you can later either remove the white or simple change it to multiply.

[Chris Holland]

Thanks.

I finally had a chance to mess with this today and got it to work. Appreciate the help.

One thing to add is to get a full on white plane I had to add a background and and composite it to the floor or the floor was picking up the light and having a gradient and it would’t matte 100%.

Is there a way around that besides adding the BG and compositing it that you know of ?

Thanks.

Chris Holland
Editor/Animator