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Leonardo Vega
09-17-2003, 05:42 PM
Hi :wavey:

I need some help. I'm trying to put a character or anything for that matter, on a photo background. Well to make it look realistic, I wanted to put a plane on the bottom of my character (and line it up with the floor on the photo) but use it ONLY to render his shadow. In other words, I don't want the plane to render at all, just my characters shadow. So the result would be a fully rendered character, with a photo background and an accurate shadow that APPEARS to be hitting the floor on the photo.

Now I read the manuals, but it only says to use the render tag and use the composite background option. But I'm not getting the results I want.


Thanks!
Leo
xeno
09-17-2003, 05:44 PM
just mess around a bit with ur lighting setup and with the shadow intensity, that ought to do the trick :)
smoke
09-17-2003, 05:50 PM
Turn on 'Compositing Background' in the Composite tag?
bobzilla
09-17-2003, 05:54 PM
There's a good tutorial on Maxon's site about creating a Shadow Caster Object. I think that's what you're talking about, right?
tcastudios
09-17-2003, 09:06 PM
Look for the "ShadowCatcher" PlugIn.

It makes it so much more easy.

Sorry, have no link at hand.

Cheers
Lennart
JIII
09-17-2003, 09:46 PM
maxon has a tutorial on how to do this on their website just poke around their a bit.
tcastudios
09-17-2003, 09:51 PM
Here it is.
The distance Falloff plug is very good as well.

http://savards.fuzehost.com/shaders.php

Lennart
Leonardo Vega
09-17-2003, 09:52 PM
If you go to page 468 of the Cinema 4D v6 Manual you will see what I'm trying to do :)

Quoted: "Composite Background: This is a very useful feature when you want to add 3D elements into images or video. It is especially valuable when you need to render only the shadows of your 3D objects to be added to images or video."

I'm going to examine the shadow catcher tutorial again and look for that plugin. Thanks!

Remember that I don't want my character to be invisible and have only his shadow on the floor. I want my character VISIBLE. I just don't want the plane (floor) to render... just the shadows on the plane, caused by the character. In other words, I want his shadow on the background image :) haha... I hope that makes sense.

In the meantime, I will study that tutorial one more time, mess around with the settings and look for that plugin.

Thanks :D
Leo
Leonardo Vega
09-17-2003, 10:07 PM
Man, I don't know how I missed that tutorial on Maxon's website :surprised

I guess I kept looking at the Shadow "CASTER" tutorial and not "CATCHER", and thinking that maybe no one understood me.

Sorry guys to have put you through all of this, but thanks again to all of you who helped out.

I'm off to do some amateur film-making! :applause:

-Leo:
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