OTOY Forums

Hey Otoy

I'm rendering out a studio car shot and the shadow catcher is reporting dark.
It's lit with two area lights and a HDRI. I have a background image loaded and Alpha Channel checked.
When I use the Modo shadow catcher option I get the exact same result.

Any answers?

Peace.

so I got this answer at one point..

"Shadow pass shows all direct light shadows that calculated on the first bounce.
This includes sun light, but excludes sky light or texture environment if importance sampling is disabled or the texture environment doesn't consist of an image.
The reason for this limitation is that those light source are not included in the direct light calculation and Octane doesn't shoot an explicit shadow ray and with that can't calculate a shadow.
The shadows are weighted by the contribution of the light source casting the shadow."

.. so far, shadow catcher works as you would expect it if you use it to catch shadows and hdri is behind, if you add some more backplates and stuff it gets mushy.. anyway I'm still struggling with this..
- it doesn't take account of the actual backplate you're resting the model on to light the model up, just catches the shadows

Sheesh, they can put a man on the moon with less power than an original iPod, but can't make a shadow catcher just catch shadows.

Thanks acc24ex

post back if you got a solution..

Well the plot thickens...

I turned off the folder containing the body of the car and this happened.
Shadow catcher is working as I'd like it to.

What gives Face_Off?

I'll turn off meshes one by one and see if it's a material tag or something.

Peace
Josh

Okay I've zeroed in on the problem.
I have the headlight assembly turned off and the shadow catcher works like it should.
The left light assembly is geo, and the right is instanced.
I turn off the meshes with blackbodies attached to them (lights) and the shadow catcher works... turn them on (make visible in the item tree) and the shadow catcher gets busted.

Peace.
Josh

Okay I've zeroed in on the problem.
I have the headlight assembly turned off and the shadow catcher works like it should.
The left light assembly is geo, and the right is instanced.
I turn off the meshes with blackbodies attached to them (lights) and the shadow catcher works... turn them on (make visible in the item tree) and the shadow catcher gets busted.

If you export this scene to ORBX and then submit it to Otoy in the Octane 3.06 Standalone release thread, the Otoy devs can investigate.

Paul