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threebrothers 7 posts
Hi everyone,
I posted this question at videocopilot, but then remembered simplyCG. Love this place. Here's my problem...
I'm compositing a shot in 3ds max. I've got a footage layer in the diffuse and opacity slots for a material mapped on a plane. The footage has an alpha channel, so looks correct when rendered. However, the shadow it projects is still that of the plane, and not the alpha edge of the footage.
Is there any way to get the shadow to use the aplha channel?
Thanks in advance for any help.
B
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ivanisavich 4,196 posts
When rendering shadow passes, you're gonna want to use "matte/shadow" materials...not standard materials. They'll allow you to render just the shadows casted onto an object, complete with proper alphas.
Also, if using VRay, make sure to go into the object settings in the VRay panel and set the object to a matte object, and its alpha contribution to "-1" to get the same result.
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threebrothers 7 posts
Sweet, thanks.
I've never really rendered out in passes before. I'm using mental ray, so I can just overide the materials to use a matte shadow one, right?
Does that mean that I should render the "beauty" pass with all shadows turned off?
Thanks for the reply Tyson
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ivanisavich 4,196 posts
Yes and yes
