projection map

[marvin042]

nobody has any help or suggestions? As long as the image mages close enough, and I can just get the shadow to be the only thing that renders in the alpha, then that's cool. I can composite-fix it later. Any ideas?

marvin

[DiGiman]

1. Try adjusting the color gain under the color balance tab in your material attributes.

2. Adjust the filter type in the attributes of the texture file node.
I am not sure what the best one will be for your situation, but try a few.

To get just a shadow alpha pass, put a use background shader on everything in the background. On any foreground objects, turn off their primary visibility but leave cast shadows turned on.

[marvin042]

Thanks for the reply. I got the image to match the background by doing what you said. Worked like a charm.

I am still, however, trying to figure out how to get a shadow pass to render out. Someone must know how to do this because it's done all the time. Unfortunately I'm not one of them huh!

I did figure that I don't need to put a use background shader on other objects. I could just set their Matte Opacity to Black Hole.

What I've done is put a helicopter over a live action plate, but the helicopter is sitting on the ground, so I want to get it's shadow. The background is a projection (which I'll turn off at render) the chopper, I can do the Black Hole thing. The ground is a different matter. If I turn off "primary visibility" as suggested, it doesn't render at all. No info for alpha channel either.

Any help would be appreciated!!!

marvin

[DiGiman]

It is easy.

Do like i said before and put a use background shader on the ground plane. On your helicopter, i recommend not using the matte gain settings, but rather just turning off the primary visibility. Leave the cast shadows option turned on.

Make sure when you render your background image is turned off. Your render will look just black, but look at the alpha channel.

[marvin042]

DiGiman,

I have got to say that you ROCK!! That did it. It was so easy (which is often the case).

I do have one more followup question which should hopefully be simple.

My helicopter was made of a bunch of different parts (transforms, fillets, etc.) which are grouped together, then parented to a locator. I originally went in to outliner, selected everything individually, and unchecked primary visibility. When I select the locator I obviously don't get a render stats section in attiribute editor. Unfortunately, when I select the group node, I still don't get a render stats tab. Is there an easier way to turn off primary visibility than to do what I did?

Once again, Thanks for all of your help man.

marvin

[DiGiman]

Yup......

Boundary select all the objects and open the attribute spread sheet. Find the render tab, and there you can change the primary visibility for all of them at once.

[marvin042]

Okay. I know I'm being a pain now!

What is boundary select? and is attribute spread sheet the same as the attribute editor? I don't think they are, but then I don't know what they are.

You have been a great help, and you really know your stuff. I appreciate it.

marvin

[marvin042]

DiGiman,

I think I just figured it out. I just selected the locator parent, found the attribute spread sheet and under the render tab saw how everything was off.

If I missed something please correct me.

When someone starts answering your questions perfectly, you tend to get a little dependant. What I mean is normally I would just look (like I just did), but I knew you knew the answer so i asked without looking first. At least I did check.

Thanks again for all of your help and quick replys.

marvin

[DiGiman]

No worries...

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