tracked shot composting problem in cycles

Hey,
So I was following an old tutorial that used Blender internal and trying to recreate it in cycles. Basically I have a tracked shot and a cycles model that I want to incorporate into my scene. It’s successfully tracked and the model is there but I cant seem to composite in a shadow plane. I have been partially successful but my plane still remains in the scene and makes the background footage darker.

Anyone have any idea what I’m doing wrong?

Here’s the tutorial I was following in case it helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq1vhAKeDEU

Here’s an image of my current rendered scene and node set up:





Finally here’s my blend file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2B2roqCyfCvdmdxbVYtM1l4WUk/view?usp=sharing

If I need to add anything to the file in order for you guys to view it properly let me know (Don’t know too much about sharing .blend files).

Thanks, Jimbob767

Looks like your shadow pass isn’t 100% white. Add a ColorRamp node directly after the Shadow output and bring the white slider inwards until the grey plane in your image disappears. You may have to tweak the Color Ramp settings a bit to get the objects shadow just right.

Agree with hype but you shouldn’t have to use a ColorRamp to boost the white : it seems that few factors make your shadows grey and not pure back/white :

  • exposure is low (-3.019)
  • environment is not visible from any rays
  • your lighting is weird

The best results I’ve had with cycles shadow planes have been using a slightly more complex setup. Render 2 layers of the shadow plane, one with the influence of the fg object excluded, then subtract them and invert. This gives you a pretty decent shadow-only that you can comp and tweak.

This video explains the technique I think:
[video]https://youtu.be/k7gKzgvFiGM[/video]