Page 1 of 1
Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Sun May 14, 2023 6:57 am
by Andreas_Resch
Hello.
I'm on the next stage of exploring Octane and have arrived at render passes. Here's a question. Is it possible to have a "normal" pass (containing) all the objects and the shadow pass in one rendering like in the image below? I know it's possible to use render layers, but that would mean twice the render time. And as I usually render very high res images (8K+) this is a significant amount of time. Thanks for any advice.
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Sun May 14, 2023 11:53 am
by Andreas_Resch
Thanks for the reply.
In Cycles it is possible to get those two passed in one render run. That's why I asked.
About render layers. From what I understood, the render process starts from scratch for each render layer. If there's a way to get multiple render layer in one render run, that's great. I'll look for more information about that.
And no - I was not talking about single-file vs. multiple files. I'm fine with multiple files. Used them in Cycles as well.
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 10:16 am
by linograndiotoy
In Cycles it is possible to get those two passed in one render run. That's why I asked.
How do you do this?
AFAIK, you need to render the scene twice in Cycles as well, using view layers.
Which can be done in Octane as well.
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 10:32 am
by Andreas_Resch
It's possible in one render run. If the "Shadow Catcher" is activated as a render pass, the objects and the shadow catcher are separated like this. Here a plane is below the sphere and it's marked as a shadow catcher in the object settings.
But I guess I can come to a similar result if I extract the objects from the combined layer with an object mask.
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 4:52 pm
by linograndiotoy
Andreas_Resch wrote:It's possible in one render run. If the "Shadow Catcher" is activated as a render pass, the objects and the shadow catcher are separated like this. Here a plane is below the sphere and it's marked as a shadow catcher in the object settings.
RenderPasses_02.jpg
But I guess I can come to a similar result if I extract the objects from the combined layer with an object mask.
In your previous example the shadow were not masked by the obejct, that's what I was thinking you needed.
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Wed May 17, 2023 5:01 pm
by Andreas_Resch
Yeah. That's not possible in Blender either. Not in one run. But I think I will go for extracting the objects from the combined pass. I hope I don't get any issues around the corners.
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Thu May 18, 2023 10:33 pm
by J.C
This might be useful but not exactly what you wanted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEgjnyNwOSg
Re: Combined and Shadow pass in one rendering?
Posted: Fri May 19, 2023 6:07 am
by Andreas_Resch
Thanks, JC. I've watched this video before (and many more of Silverwing

) But I will do it again when I deep-dive into all my export options.