Shadow-Catcher in Blender Cycles: example with documented Nodes

Shadow-Catcher in Blender Cycles: example with documented Nodes

With the release of Blender 2.74 RC comes a great feature: you can attach a text note to a Frame in the Nodes view.

This means you can document your Nodes, right there in the Nodes view. You can put node(s) inside a frame, attach a text note to the frame, and the text note stays with the frame.

To celebrate & to give back to my fellow blenders, I want to share a reusable .blend file that you can easily use to render objects with shadows on a transparent background in Cycles. I learned from web tutes from other kind blenders, and set this up with the new text notes feature – you will see an explanation of what to do, in the Nodes view.

Just put your own objects on the first layer, go to Nodes view and check out the simple instructions.

You can adjust shadow intensity after an image render and save an image without re-rendering.

You can also click a switch to turn on a colored background, instead of transparent, and you can adjust the color directly. No need to put a material on a shadow-catching plane.

Of course, you are welcome to take this example, make it even better, and share!

Thank you, Blender developers.

Attachments


Shadow-Catcher in Blender Cycles example with documented Nodes.blend (609 KB)

didn’t know about the notes, thanks…
can be very useful, but where are the gui guys when you need them :slight_smile:

pretty cool to have text in there.

one big issue, it’s not working with HDR

no, it doesnt work with emission type of objects because they dont produce what the renderer knows as shadows, you’d have to have a pass with indirect illumination, and now we get to the messy part, it just works with actual lights not even geometry emitters.