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I'm getting a weird result with the new shadow catcher when using emissive materials or a colored light.

Viewport:

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Result:

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Compositor Setup:

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I'm guessing there's something wrong with the setup. Any ideas? Thanks!

Smith
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  • I think you need to enable an environment pass and use the output of that pass as the background input. Otherwise your nodes look fine. – Marty Fouts Dec 06 '21 at 00:49
  • I think in this case, since I'm not compositing onto an existing image or using the rendered background, the environment pass won't be useful. In fact it's black, since there's no input for the world. I'm using the RGB input to define the color of the backdrop. – Smith Dec 06 '21 at 16:21
  • I think that's not going to work, because the Background shader "should only be used for the world surface output.". You need to make your world shader be the RGB value you have in the background in the compositor, enable the environment pass, and use its output in the multiply node. – Marty Fouts Dec 06 '21 at 16:24
  • Thanks for the explanation. Isn't the problem then that it affects lighting? – Smith Dec 06 '21 at 17:19
  • Well, that's the point of the 3.0 shadowcatcher, it's supposed to give more 'realistic' shadows by having the scene lighting interact with the world lighting. – Marty Fouts Dec 06 '21 at 17:26
  • Hmm, but since I can't control whether or not to use world background for lighting, it limits the utility. In the end, I'm trying to get a result like Keyshot, where the output only includes shadows cast from scene objects and that's composited onto a solid color bg of my choosing. With non-colored light, the above setup works great, with no additional photoshop. I could use render layers, but then it's rendering twice. Maybe there's something I'm missing? I really appreciate the input! – Smith Dec 06 '21 at 18:28
  • If you're missing something, I'm not sure what it is; but it would be nice to have 2.9 style shadow catching as an alternative. – Marty Fouts Dec 06 '21 at 20:09

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