Shadow composite not having same shadows as scene.

ssjenforcer

User Posts: 217
Mar 14, 2022 20:38

*EDIT:
I figured it out, there is a bug with Area light objects for centileo. Area lights have no Matte Shadow Weight. Only Omni lights and infinite lights do.
Spotlights don't appear to have any Matte Shadow Weight at all either.
_______

I am trying to composite this onto footage, but look what happens to the shadow when I apply shadow catcher to the plane object. The shadow looks completely different than what it should look like. And when I use After Effects it also shows the same incorrect shadow in my photo.
Is there a reason my shadow looks completely wrong when using shadow catcher?

I have one light object only with Matte Shadow Weight applied so I can achieve the shadow I am looking for.
I turned my Centileo Environment Tag for the Sky object down to zero for Matte Shadow Weight so it would not affect the shadow, but doing that takes the shadow away like in the second photo. Keeping that Tag Matte Shadow Weight at 1 looks like this, but it also doesn't have the shadow from my one light but instead has the light from the HDRi.
How do I get a shadow catcher to use my light object in my scene?

Attached Files

2022-03-14 20_22_28-Window.png (713.84 Kb)

2022-03-14 20_22_39-Window.png (710.21 Kb)

2022-03-14 20_38_33-Window.png (881 Kb)

Edited: ssjenforcer - Mar 14, 2022 20:50

Kirgman

Administrator Posts: 895
Mar 20, 2022 11:42

Actually this is the right finding that shadow catcher weights only for Omni, Infine lights sources and Sky+EnvMap tag.
The others lights like Area and Spot don't support casting to the shadow catcher because they have limited directional lighting, e.g. they don't lit the scene behind them. This would create unneceassary shortcomins.
On the other hand the Omni light is good, you can place it somewhere and tune the radius to get the neceassary postion and shadow softness.
Also why your shadow catcher object plane is so small? Usually it should be larger.

CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat

ssjenforcer

User Posts: 217
Mar 21, 2022 02:01

Quote

Kirgman wrote:
Actually this is the right finding that shadow catcher weights only for Omni, Infine lights sources and Sky+EnvMap tag.
The others lights like Area and Spot don't support casting to the shadow catcher because they have limited directional lighting, e.g. they don't lit the scene behind them. This would create unneceassary shortcomins.
On the other hand the Omni light is good, you can place it somewhere and tune the radius to get the neceassary postion and shadow softness.
Also why your shadow catcher object plane is so small? Usually it should be larger.

Ok, and yea the omni light does work fine, I just assumed any light should work for shadow catching.
The area light I used was small to simulate the real life light, but even making it bigger didn't work, which was why I thought it might have been a bug.

Kirgman Administrator Posts: 895 Mar 27, 2022 14:40 #4 Well, the area light doesn't shine behind it. Actually from regular geometry objects the Omni light source is the best for matte shadow tuning. And you can exclude such a light source from shining to the other objects by setting zero for the multipliers of Reflection, Diffuse, Transmission and other layers. Only make Shadow Weight non zero CentiLeo Chat: https://t.me/centileochat

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