You can also plug the shadow catcher pass to a color socket from an invert node with factor on 1.000. Then, you plug the result to an set alpha node alpha's socket, set to "replace alpha" mode. The result is pretty much the same as far as I could tell. Great explanation, by the way!
Finally! this is exactly What I 've been looking for! and it wasn't anywhere! Thank you so much. you just saved my life! I was complaining why there is no one explaining about this in UA-cam. you are only one! who shows how to transparent shadow pass merge with transparent image together in composition in blender!
This is exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you! Its not easily explained anywhere else. I'll probably modify it a bit for my purposes. You've been helpful!!
Damn, man!!! I`ve been learning all kind of complex rocket-mega-scientific-node-based stuff about shadow catcher pass and I was lost in this universe, but you showed that it`s all simple and easy doable! Thanks man, you just saved my project! Let there be shadow!
Sometimes customer wants just renders in Blender (and not Houdini....) with transparent background and some shadow catcher, so thank you for this. Subscribed
Thanks! Yeah, the shadow catcher improved a lot. I hope guys at blender give us more passes in the future or improve the overall workflow in compositing.
Thanks for this. I was stuck with opaque shadow rendering out to use in After Effects. Can you also show how to get transparent reflections to use in After Effects or Resolve, please? Thanks in advance!
very cool ! but if I just want a shadow pass in my render, without plans with shadow catcher masks. How can I do this as simply as in the old versions?
Hey, if we're talking about older blender versions that don't have the shadowcatcher pass, then you'll have to go for the old-school duplicate layer method. Btw, which blender version are we talking about here.
@@TheInfinites I believe it would be the most updated version. I ask this because I work in a studio where we sometimes need to send the shadow pass in the exr for this render to be used in the final composition of the film. However, when we migrated to the newer version due to new features, we noticed that the shadow pass was eliminated. something I couldn't understand why.
Hello! How to get the shadow render pass? I know that this pass was removed and instead Blender has a shadow catcher. Its logic is that an object that is not needed in the render is excluded from the rendering. But I have a large scene with dozens of objects and I don't need to exclude anything from the render by looping through a large list of objects. I need a shadow pass that I can then combine with occlusion in compositing to get a nice solid shadow. Now when I watch the shadow catcher pass I get a white screen. I can't find a solution that meets my specific needs. On UA-cam, there are mainly solutions for excluding objects that do not participate in the rendering.
@@TheInfinites Thanks for the answer! Yes, I'm in cycles. I didn't say that Shadowcatcher doesn't exist. I have it. But when viewing it as a separate render pass, I have a white screen and I checked with the Exposure node that there are no variations in the information. Of course, I managed to get the shadow from the combine pass. But this is the wrong method. Previously, Blender had a separate shadow pass renderer, just like Maya, for example. Now I have dozens of objects in the scene and there is no shadow on them at all. It is only available in the diffuse direct pass. But it contains a lot of unnecessary unnecessary information for the shadow pass. I am a passionate fan of Blender, but this point was made either not obviously (I see many people on the Internet swearing at it), or not very smartly.
@@MrGravicaper Interesting. You should be getting shadows for your object. Do you mind sharing a screengrab of your node layout so I can better understand it. You can also join the channel's discord server. And sorry for getting back so late :)
@@TheInfinites Thanks for the help offered. I was offered an interesting option to use override material. In one motion, without spoiling the scene, he repaints everything in the scene as if it were made of white plaster, all this looks like a pass of shadows, although without a shadow gradient. But there is an occlusion pass for this and it will greatly help with this point. I'll try this technology and if it doesn't help, I'll return to your suggestion with help. Best wishes!
Hi, yes this is what I'm talking about, Thank you so much, dude! using alpha over and invert it is the answer, I'm still learning about nodes and you solve it smoothly, once again thank you so much! ✌
the shadow catcher only work for default light in blender right? because i'm use object plane for light and want to catch a shadow that's din't work for me
This setup helped me a lot a few times, but now I have a slghtly different problem: when using the Shadow Catcher object directly without the pass in the compositor, the shadow has no color. However when using the Shadow Catcher pass, the shadows can have color - but it gets lost when using this method described in the video. Is there a good way to color the shadow with the transparency as well? Because I've played around with it and I get to color it somehow, but the result is not great.
hey, thanks for the tutorial! do you know how I can now export this shadow as a texture? I want to use it in AR software (Meta Spark). Someone told me to make the shadow in Blender using this method, and then import it to Spark as an Albedo Texture. all very overwhelming for me😱
Hey, you can connect your final output to the composite node. In your render settings, just select exr or png. Alternatively, you can view your final shadow using the view node, and then just hit Alt-S and save the image. Then all you have to do is, use the image as an albedo texture.
I don't use the compositor to post my renders. I use photoshop, please do a tut describing the process to get Blender to render out a shadow pass with transparency. thanks.
@@TheInfinites so...basically to reap the benefits of the shadow pass, you *must* use Blender to do the compositing of your render passes? I'm not new to 3D, but I am new to Blender. Was formerly used to rendering passes with alpha, and then compositing in After Effects, which is what I assumed would be the case with using shadow catcher/shadow pass in Blender. But it looks like you're saying that is *not* the case and in order to really use the shadow pass w/ alpha as intended means you have to also do the compositing in Blender...am I understanding that right?
@@rikocribbs9334 Hey, I can understand it's a bit difficult to work with blender passes. It certainly is the case with blender cryptomattes. Currently, it takes some extra bit of work to get them to work in nuke and fusion. The tutorial is just a way. I'm sure there are other ways and could possibly be more efficient than mine. And these techniques can be used in different compositing softwares. But tbh, yeah, it's a bit of a hassle to work be blender cycles passes outside of Blender.
@@TheInfinites Ouch. I was afraid of that, haha. Granted this is just one way to work with the passes, and I've been watching some other tuts as well to see what they say...but yea, there seems to be a general consensus that working with passes outside of Blender is just not a great way to try spending your day lol. Not super "integration friendly" with other editing softwares. As always, thanks so much for the explanation! It's invaluable to have such a broad community online and people genuinely willing to respond. Makes a big difference (:
@@rikocribbs9334 yeah blender passes are really friendly with other softwares and tbh, the compositor haven't been getting a lot of attention. We rarely see new features added to it and it still is very slow. Hopefully things will change in the near future. Also, yeah, the blender community is totally awesome! The best out there!
Thanks for the video. Bro but if you just wanted shadow of the statue & background transparency, what's the difference if you just enabled Shadow Catcher on the plane as you did & turn on world transparency in the Render Properties/Film section to have the transparent background?
Hey, so if you just enable shadow catcher and turn on transparency, you won't get the shadow as a different pass. You need to create another render layer and do some extra work to get it as a separate layer. On the other hand, if you enable the shadowcatcher pass, you get a grayscale image. The above method is the best of both worlds with minimum effort :)
hey bro I am having a problem I wanna use a plane as holdout and shadow catcher as well simultaneously. how am I supposed to do that? blender ain't letting me use both at the same time plz reply
Interesting that you can control the color of the shadows this way...I'm curious though, because you're doing it manually here -- is there a way to have the shadow color (hue) responsively update in real time as it relates to the color of the light source? Is there a feature that allows it to automatically adapt/update if the color of the light is changed? I guess I also have a similar question regarding the saturation of the shadow color. You demonstrated that oversaturating the shadow color looks unnatural, so is there a way to have the saturation automatically update corresponding with the intensity of the light source?
@@cogosoda6452 yeah. I usually end up renderering the reflection pass seperately. Don't use the one that comes up with the shadow catcher. Hopefully, the future versions of blender will have a reflection pass. Do you mind telling me what are you trying to do?
@@TheInfinites im making ui for a game, i need to have the ui background separate to the ui elements and the reflections that the ui elements cast onto the background
I followed precisely all the steps and get none of your result (I'm using 3.5.0). I'm curious to know how many, of the peolple who left a positive comment, have tried and succeed in this tutorial...
Hey, I may need a screen grab of your node tree to see exactly what's going on. I'm currently working on a project and that too is in 3.5 I'm also using this shadow catcher technique and it's working fine for me.
You explain blender like unmesh tinda explaining Photoshop, man keep going.
This has to be one of the best comments I've ever got! Thanks a lot!
You can also plug the shadow catcher pass to a color socket from an invert node with factor on 1.000. Then, you plug the result to an set alpha node alpha's socket, set to "replace alpha" mode. The result is pretty much the same as far as I could tell. Great explanation, by the way!
This is interesting. Happy to hear there are multiple ways!
Finally! this is exactly What I 've been looking for! and it wasn't anywhere!
Thank you so much. you just saved my life! I was complaining why there is no one explaining about this in UA-cam. you are only one! who shows how to transparent shadow pass merge
with transparent image together in composition in blender!
Hey, you're most welcome! And thanks a lot for giving my tutorial a shot :)
This is exactly what I've been looking for. Thank you! Its not easily explained anywhere else. I'll probably modify it a bit for my purposes. You've been helpful!!
You're most welcome, mate!
Damn, man!!! I`ve been learning all kind of complex rocket-mega-scientific-node-based stuff about shadow catcher pass and I was lost in this universe, but you showed that it`s all simple and easy doable! Thanks man, you just saved my project! Let there be shadow!
Hey man, super glad I was able to help you out! Cheers! And indeed, let there be shadow, with alpha.
Sometimes customer wants just renders in Blender (and not Houdini....) with transparent background and some shadow catcher, so thank you for this. Subscribed
Thanks a bunch mate!
that was very helpful.
The shadow catcher got better with blender 3+ I guess. It looked like pixelated fireflies before, but now it is way smoother.
Thanks!
Yeah, the shadow catcher improved a lot. I hope guys at blender give us more passes in the future or improve the overall workflow in compositing.
Thanks for this. I was stuck with opaque shadow rendering out to use in After Effects. Can you also show how to get transparent reflections to use in After Effects or Resolve, please? Thanks in advance!
Hey man, reflections are a bit tricky. I'm still figuring out that part myself.
I always come back here when I don't remember about shadow catcher pass. Thank you very much
You're most welcome!
Also, ironically, even I do the same :)
very cool ! but if I just want a shadow pass in my render, without plans with shadow catcher masks. How can I do this as simply as in the old versions?
Hey, if we're talking about older blender versions that don't have the shadowcatcher pass, then you'll have to go for the old-school duplicate layer method.
Btw, which blender version are we talking about here.
@@TheInfinites
I believe it would be the most updated version.
I ask this because I work in a studio where we sometimes need to send the shadow pass in the exr for this render to be used in the final composition of the film.
However, when we migrated to the newer version due to new features, we noticed that the shadow pass was eliminated. something I couldn't understand why.
@@vyctor0rj Hey, the 4.0 version still has the shadow catcher pass. Are you using 4.0 as well?
Hello!
How to get the shadow render pass? I know that this pass was removed and instead Blender has a shadow catcher. Its logic is that an object that is not needed in the render is excluded from the rendering. But I have a large scene with dozens of objects and I don't need to exclude anything from the render by looping through a large list of objects. I need a shadow pass that I can then combine with occlusion in compositing to get a nice solid shadow. Now when I watch the shadow catcher pass I get a white screen.
I can't find a solution that meets my specific needs. On UA-cam, there are mainly solutions for excluding objects that do not participate in the rendering.
Hey, the shadowcatcher pass still exists. I'm not sure why its not showing up on your end. Are you sure you are on Cycles?
@@TheInfinites Thanks for the answer! Yes, I'm in cycles. I didn't say that Shadowcatcher doesn't exist. I have it. But when viewing it as a separate render pass, I have a white screen and I checked with the Exposure node that there are no variations in the information. Of course, I managed to get the shadow from the combine pass. But this is the wrong method. Previously, Blender had a separate shadow pass renderer, just like Maya, for example.
Now I have dozens of objects in the scene and there is no shadow on them at all. It is only available in the diffuse direct pass. But it contains a lot of unnecessary unnecessary information for the shadow pass. I am a passionate fan of Blender, but this point was made either not obviously (I see many people on the Internet swearing at it), or not very smartly.
@@MrGravicaper Interesting. You should be getting shadows for your object. Do you mind sharing a screengrab of your node layout so I can better understand it. You can also join the channel's discord server. And sorry for getting back so late :)
@@TheInfinites Thanks for the help offered. I was offered an interesting option to use override material. In one motion, without spoiling the scene, he repaints everything in the scene as if it were made of white plaster, all this looks like a pass of shadows, although without a shadow gradient. But there is an occlusion pass for this and it will greatly help with this point.
I'll try this technology and if it doesn't help, I'll return to your suggestion with help. Best wishes!
Hi, yes this is what I'm talking about, Thank you so much, dude!
using alpha over and invert it is the answer, I'm still learning about nodes and you solve it smoothly,
once again thank you so much! ✌
Ay! My pleasure :)
@@TheInfinites anyway could you fix the discord invite link?
@@frontliner3697 Done
@@TheInfinites Thnks!
the shadow catcher only work for default light in blender right? because i'm use object plane for light and want to catch a shadow that's din't work for me
drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dApfXpC2CyaPjmSeohedLlAMPMSKzRmX?usp=sharing
Link for the case, might be helpful for me if you help :)
This setup helped me a lot a few times, but now I have a slghtly different problem: when using the Shadow Catcher object directly without the pass in the compositor, the shadow has no color. However when using the Shadow Catcher pass, the shadows can have color - but it gets lost when using this method described in the video. Is there a good way to color the shadow with the transparency as well? Because I've played around with it and I get to color it somehow, but the result is not great.
Hey, I understand your problem. Let me try something on my end. Fingers crossed :)
@@TheInfinites That would be great. As I said, I've made some experiments but they did not really turn out well.
Can you explain how to do this with Glossy Indirect pass that actually saves with a png with transparency
Don't think that's possible. I'm hoping in future blender just gives us a reflection pass.
Hey Infinites, how i can bake these shadows in my uv map please?
Ah, a bit confused as to what you want to achieve here. Do you mind elaborating it a bit?
hey, thanks for the tutorial! do you know how I can now export this shadow as a texture? I want to use it in AR software (Meta Spark). Someone told me to make the shadow in Blender using this method, and then import it to Spark as an Albedo Texture. all very overwhelming for me😱
Hey, you can connect your final output to the composite node. In your render settings, just select exr or png.
Alternatively, you can view your final shadow using the view node, and then just hit Alt-S and save the image.
Then all you have to do is, use the image as an albedo texture.
I have problem with tutorial "Render passes not supported in the viewport compositor". When will you be online on Discord? I will show you screenshot
Hey, I’ll be online. You can share it.
I don't use the compositor to post my renders. I use photoshop, please do a tut describing the process to get Blender to render out a shadow pass with transparency. thanks.
Hey, unfortunately, blender doesn't give you a transparent shadow pass. Hence this tutorial haha
@@TheInfinites so...basically to reap the benefits of the shadow pass, you *must* use Blender to do the compositing of your render passes?
I'm not new to 3D, but I am new to Blender. Was formerly used to rendering passes with alpha, and then compositing in After Effects, which is what I assumed would be the case with using shadow catcher/shadow pass in Blender.
But it looks like you're saying that is *not* the case and in order to really use the shadow pass w/ alpha as intended means you have to also do the compositing in Blender...am I understanding that right?
@@rikocribbs9334 Hey, I can understand it's a bit difficult to work with blender passes. It certainly is the case with blender cryptomattes. Currently, it takes some extra bit of work to get them to work in nuke and fusion.
The tutorial is just a way. I'm sure there are other ways and could possibly be more efficient than mine. And these techniques can be used in different compositing softwares. But tbh, yeah, it's a bit of a hassle to work be blender cycles passes outside of Blender.
@@TheInfinites Ouch. I was afraid of that, haha. Granted this is just one way to work with the passes, and I've been watching some other tuts as well to see what they say...but yea, there seems to be a general consensus that working with passes outside of Blender is just not a great way to try spending your day lol. Not super "integration friendly" with other editing softwares.
As always, thanks so much for the explanation!
It's invaluable to have such a broad community online and people genuinely willing to respond. Makes a big difference (:
@@rikocribbs9334 yeah blender passes are really friendly with other softwares and tbh, the compositor haven't been getting a lot of attention. We rarely see new features added to it and it still is very slow. Hopefully things will change in the near future.
Also, yeah, the blender community is totally awesome! The best out there!
i dont find Render image in shaeder editor pls how i can find it
You need to click on the image icon (placed on top) and toggle through.
thank you so much, you have saved me a lot of time
Anytime!
You're a life saver...thank you so much!
Anytime!
Thanks for the video. Bro but if you just wanted shadow of the statue & background transparency, what's the difference if you just enabled Shadow Catcher on the plane as you did & turn on world transparency in the Render Properties/Film section to have the transparent background?
Hey, so if you just enable shadow catcher and turn on transparency, you won't get the shadow as a different pass. You need to create another render layer and do some extra work to get it as a separate layer. On the other hand, if you enable the shadowcatcher pass, you get a grayscale image. The above method is the best of both worlds with minimum effort :)
@@TheInfinites Hi. Well thanks for letting me know, I hadn't ever needed to do it but was really curious, thanks, I understand now.
hey bro I am having a problem
I wanna use a plane as holdout and shadow catcher as well simultaneously.
how am I supposed to do that?
blender ain't letting me use both at the same time
plz reply
Hey, you might wanna use different view layers to achieve that. Pretty sure that will do the job.
@@TheInfinites thanks, definitely gonna give it a shot
Interesting that you can control the color of the shadows this way...I'm curious though, because you're doing it manually here -- is there a way to have the shadow color (hue) responsively update in real time as it relates to the color of the light source? Is there a feature that allows it to automatically adapt/update if the color of the light is changed?
I guess I also have a similar question regarding the saturation of the shadow color. You demonstrated that oversaturating the shadow color looks unnatural, so is there a way to have the saturation automatically update corresponding with the intensity of the light source?
I believe I've answered your questions on discord. Let me know if you have more :)
@@TheInfinites yes you did, thanks so much!
@@rikocribbs9334 Anytime
what do i do if i have lights and reflections? the shadow passs isnt greyscale
I think you can convert it to a grey-scale image by using a color ramp node.
@@TheInfinites yes but then i lose the reflections
@@cogosoda6452 yeah. I usually end up renderering the reflection pass seperately. Don't use the one that comes up with the shadow catcher. Hopefully, the future versions of blender will have a reflection pass. Do you mind telling me what are you trying to do?
@@cogosoda6452 You're gonna have to get real creative here by mixing and merging the passes.
@@TheInfinites im making ui for a game, i need to have the ui background separate to the ui elements and the reflections that the ui elements cast onto the background
Thank you so much! This tutorial was so helpful, I wish I could give you 1000 thumbs up right now. 😀
Hey, you're most welcome! And thanks for the 1000 thumbs up!
bro this is so clutch
Cheers!
THANKS A LOT! this is really what i was looking for!!!!💜💜💜
Glad you found it!
Thanks mat, you just saved me quite some time :)
Happy to hear mate!
Thnx bro this is so helpful
Most welcome!
thanks for the Info! video could have been under a minute though!
You're welcome mate!
thank you , this helps
Most welcome!
Awesome thank you so much!
Most welcome!
just what I needed thank you🙂
Most welcome mate!
Thank you, very helpful tutorial
Most welcome!
Very clever - thanks!
Most welcome!
Wow this is great!!
Thanks!
Awesome thanks ! Much Needed
Most welcome!
thanks!! you saved me:)
nice one! Thx bro!
Anytime mate!
you helped a lot :D
Anytime mate!
Thanks all the other tutorials didn't work
Yo, I'm glad it worked out for you!
well done man
ty
Anytime!
Lol Man, you save me! Thanks!
Happy for you, mate!
Excelente!
Thanks!
Hey man, great work! Thanks alot. I have less headaches because of you. #Blender #3drenderpasses
You're welcome! Glad it worked out for you.
I followed precisely all the steps and get none of your result (I'm using 3.5.0).
I'm curious to know how many, of the peolple who left a positive comment, have tried and succeed in this tutorial...
Hey, I may need a screen grab of your node tree to see exactly what's going on. I'm currently working on a project and that too is in 3.5 I'm also using this shadow catcher technique and it's working fine for me.
💯
Thanks