How to create a shadows pass in cycles?

Question

Everytime I am doing one thing another problem comes up, and I have a deadline to follow unless there is a way to create shadows using another software (after effects)? I want to composite this thing in after effects but I cannot do something simple like a shadows pass. I followed the shadows pass tutorials but of course nothing works. Here is my node setup:

as the backdrop shows, there is only black

enter image description here

here are other settings

enter image description here

Is there anything I am doing wrong?

an update to my node setup:

enter image description here

Note that if all you want is a shadow pass that includes everything in the scene, you don't need a second renderlayer. You can just enable the shadow pass on the character layer. — gandalf3, Nov 24 '13 at 19:17
I tried that and nothing worked. Maybe I should continue this without shadow. But it will look weird. — user2883800, Nov 25 '13 at 00:20
Hmm. What precisely didn't work? Could you upload your .blend? — gandalf3, Nov 25 '13 at 00:45
the shadow finally appeared but now the background image is not showing even when I render it, it is transparent. here is a larger image http://i.stack.imgur.com/55HVu.png — user2883800, Nov 25 '13 at 01:24
Try using an Alpha Over node in place of the Overlay node — gandalf3, Nov 25 '13 at 01:28

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 24 '13 at 14:59

5

Here is a simple example for using Shadow pass in your case:

enter image description here

I personally prefer combining shadow with other passes like AO, for better result.

answered Nov 24 '13 at 14:59

Leon Cheung

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it still didn't work. I see the background but not the character and the shadow. – user2883800 Nov 24 '13 at 23:45
@user2883800 Would you like to share with the .blend file? You needn't pack all source data, but should be with same settings. – Leon Cheung Nov 25 '13 at 03:05
it worked. I needed to ad an extra node that was used in another tutorial. I just placed it on there randomly and the shadow appeared. thank you. – user2883800 Nov 25 '13 at 04:01
4

Please help future users by telling us what node you added and where you put it. (If you just randomly put it somewhere and it worked, then it was probably a viewer node, which is not required for the final compositing). – Matt Nov 26 '13 at 22:57
I used the image scale node and connected to the image node. – user2883800 Nov 30 '13 at 16:25

How to create a shadows pass in cycles?

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