Shadow Catcher not Catching

[treddie]

Hi.

I think I've run across a post asking the same thing, but can't seem to find it now. Anyway, I have a ground plane with a diffuse material and it is set to "Matte". In PMC, I have Alpha Channel enabled and Environment disabled. A couple of questions:

1. The manual says you need a light source. Makes sense...No light source, no shadows. But can the light source be the HDRI environment? I am not having any luck catching any shadows from the environment image.

2. With Alpha Channel selected, I would assume an alpha channel gets saved out with the render. But the only file formats are png and exr, which do not save out a separate alpha channel. What am I missing?

Thanks!

[treddie]

LOOOOLLLLLL! Would help if the damn ground plane was...UNDER THE SUBJECT??? Ain't gonna be catchin any shadows if the mitt ain't under the ball.

[xxdanbrowne]

Glad you got it!

You have to love the dumb ones though: in my case I had the normals reversed so no light was coming out and no shadows were being cast.

Doh.

[treddie]

Heheh. The human brain is a dangerous thing. )