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It took me a while to work out the SU process, as Micha's workaround is for V-Ray for Rhino, but this is what we're going to achieve: a matte shadow which apparently sits on a spherical HDR or LDR background. I haven't spent any time tweaking settings to match the lighting on the chair to the background, just to document the matte shadow process. Be warned- it's a lot of work for a very subtle result, but for all you car renderers out there this workaround should be invaluable.
1. Create a white textured plane to place your object upon (from now on I'll call this the ground plane). Give the texture its own name e.g. "Ground Plane" (I forgot to do this at the start of my tutorial so my ground plane material was called "Pure White AD" which could cause problems if that material was used somewhere else in a complex model.
2. If we render this now using a simple spherical studio setup we can see the matte shadow beneath the chair. As we can still see the edges of the ground plane against the white background we should make the ground plane larger until all the edges render 255,255,255 white. As I forgot to do this I had to do a little extra tweaking in Photoshop later (step 7).
3. Under the Options menu of VfSU's Material Editor untick "Double-Sided" for that white material. This is the key to the whole workaround as it allows the shadow to show through to the underside of the ground plane.
4. Open the ground plane group, right-click its underside, choose "Align View" and then zoom to extents.
5. You should now be looking directly up towards the zenith with the ground plane parallel to your viewport. Render this out at a large size- I used 2800x1600.
6. Save the render in png format. I called it "Ground Plane Texture".
7. Open it in Photoshop and crop it down to the size of the plane (a quick way is to right-click on the layer, click "select pixels", then crop it). As I didn't make my ground plane large enough (see step 2) the pixels at the edges of the plane didn't render 255,255,255 white so I had to adjust the levels so they were (of course being careful not to burn out the matte shadowed area in the centre) otherwise you'll see the edges of the plane in your final render. Save the image.
8. While you still have that image open in PS, fill it completely 0,0,0 black and save it with another name (i.e. "Ground Plane Texture Black"). This will act as placemarker for SU's UV mapping so VfSU knows where to place the matte shadow on the plane.
9. Now back in SU load the first matte shadow material "Ground Plane Texture" in the texture slot for the white material you applied to the ground plane.
10. Adjust its scale and position so it fits the plane exactly.
11. Which is easily done by dragging the pins in SU's texture position editor.
12. We now have a pretty cool photorealistic matte shadow baked onto the ground plane in SU.
13. Now (having made sure the UV mapping of the ground plane is correct using the "Ground Plane Texture") reload its black clone "Ground Plane Texture Black" into the SU texture slot.
14. Open VfSU's Material Editor, and load the "Ground Plane Texture" png into the "Transparency" slot of your ground plane. You are now finally finished setting up the matte shadow setup, so load your chosen HDR or LDR spherical background into VfSU's Environment slot and render away.
15. Final render.
Hope this was useful,
Jackson
1. Create a white textured plane to place your object upon (from now on I'll call this the ground plane). Give the texture its own name e.g. "Ground Plane" (I forgot to do this at the start of my tutorial so my ground plane material was called "Pure White AD" which could cause problems if that material was used somewhere else in a complex model.
2. If we render this now using a simple spherical studio setup we can see the matte shadow beneath the chair. As we can still see the edges of the ground plane against the white background we should make the ground plane larger until all the edges render 255,255,255 white. As I forgot to do this I had to do a little extra tweaking in Photoshop later (step 7).
3. Under the Options menu of VfSU's Material Editor untick "Double-Sided" for that white material. This is the key to the whole workaround as it allows the shadow to show through to the underside of the ground plane.
4. Open the ground plane group, right-click its underside, choose "Align View" and then zoom to extents.
5. You should now be looking directly up towards the zenith with the ground plane parallel to your viewport. Render this out at a large size- I used 2800x1600.
6. Save the render in png format. I called it "Ground Plane Texture".
7. Open it in Photoshop and crop it down to the size of the plane (a quick way is to right-click on the layer, click "select pixels", then crop it). As I didn't make my ground plane large enough (see step 2) the pixels at the edges of the plane didn't render 255,255,255 white so I had to adjust the levels so they were (of course being careful not to burn out the matte shadowed area in the centre) otherwise you'll see the edges of the plane in your final render. Save the image.
8. While you still have that image open in PS, fill it completely 0,0,0 black and save it with another name (i.e. "Ground Plane Texture Black"). This will act as placemarker for SU's UV mapping so VfSU knows where to place the matte shadow on the plane.
9. Now back in SU load the first matte shadow material "Ground Plane Texture" in the texture slot for the white material you applied to the ground plane.
10. Adjust its scale and position so it fits the plane exactly.
11. Which is easily done by dragging the pins in SU's texture position editor.
12. We now have a pretty cool photorealistic matte shadow baked onto the ground plane in SU.
13. Now (having made sure the UV mapping of the ground plane is correct using the "Ground Plane Texture") reload its black clone "Ground Plane Texture Black" into the SU texture slot.
14. Open VfSU's Material Editor, and load the "Ground Plane Texture" png into the "Transparency" slot of your ground plane. You are now finally finished setting up the matte shadow setup, so load your chosen HDR or LDR spherical background into VfSU's Environment slot and render away.
15. Final render.
Hope this was useful,
Jackson
for one little effect
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