OTOY Forums

I'm trying to understand what the difference is. I assumed that the Matte feature of the diffuse material was the shader level equivalent of the Camera Visibility control for mesh items. And that's exactly what I'd like it to do. But it doesn't at all. Here's an example:
Original scene Camera Visibility turned off on the sphere mesh Camera Visibility turned back on, and Matte enabled in the sphere material

So what exactly is going on here? Camera Visibility is doing exactly what it should—casting shadows, bouncing diffuse light onto other surfaces, showing up in reflections, but not appearing to the camera directly and being cut out of the alpha. But Matte is ignoring diffuse and only casting/receiving shadows (including self-occlusion it looks like) and adding that shadow into the alpha. So, it's basically just a shadow catcher? Maybe that's all it's supposed to be (the manual does say that when a MODO material has a shadow catcher shader, use matte in the conversion). But it might be easier to remember if it was called Shadow Catcher instead of Matte, which would be inline with MODO users are used to.

Shader level camera visibility would be very helpful, but I'm guessing that's not possible at the moment?

You are right - Matte = Shadow Catcher. You would generally only apply it to the floor, not to other objects in the scene. http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Standalo ... age_id=454.

Shader level camera visibility would be very helpful, but I'm guessing that's not possible at the moment?

Set opacity to 0 for this.

Paul

face_off wrote:You are right - Matte = Shadow Catcher. You would generally only apply it to the floor, not to other objects in the scene. http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Standalo ... age_id=454.

Thanks Paul. Maybe the Matte label could be changed to Shadow Catcher? I know OTOY set the name in standalone, but the term "matte" conveys a different functionality than what it's actually doing and the naming is not consistent with MODO's usage.

Set opacity to 0 for this.

No, it's not the same as Camera Visibility. Setting opacity to 0 just just removes the object from everything; doesn't receive shadows, doesn't cast shadows, and doesn't show up in reflections.

riggles wrote:

face_off wrote:You are right - Matte = Shadow Catcher. You would generally only apply it to the floor, not to other objects in the scene. http://render.otoy.com/manuals/Standalo ... age_id=454.

Thanks Paul. Maybe the Matte label could be changed to Shadow Catcher? I know OTOY set the name in standalone, but the term "matte" conveys a different functionality than what it's actually doing and the naming is not consistent with MODO's usage.

Set opacity to 0 for this.

No, it's not the same as Camera Visibility. Setting opacity to 0 just just removes the object from everything; doesn't receive shadows, doesn't cast shadows, and doesn't show up in reflections.

bump, bump.

Paul could you say smth about this?

I have a situation where I have a white diffuse material floor. It's all nice. But I want it to act as a shadow catcher. I turn on the "Matte" option and I get 10x more shadows than I've seen previouse without the "Matte" option turned on.

look at the examples below:

this is a white diffuse material:


and here it is with the matte turned on:



where is this all shadow in the second image comming from?

bump, bump.

Paul could you say smth about this?

I have a situation where I have a white diffuse material floor. It's all nice. But I want it to act as a shadow catcher. I turn on the "Matte" option and I get 10x more shadows than I've seen previouse without the "Matte" option turned on.

look at the examples below:

this is a white diffuse material:

I'm really sorry - but this is out of my field of expertise - and you will need to post this question in the general Octane forum. Before you do, do a search of "Matte", since there has been a lot of discussion on it (but I haven't had the time to absorb it all).

Paul