Tutorial 05: C4D Multi-Pass Rendering/Compositing and Shadow Catching.
Hey everyone, here’s a tutorial I made that explains my multi-pass workflow in Cinema 4D to After Effects. Namely, my focus was to show how to set up your C4D scene to catch shadows properly on live action footage or a photograph in one render. I’ve had a lot of questions how to do this so I hope this is helpful for some.
Often you will here C4D users ask if there is something similar to 3DS MAX’s “Shadow Matte” material. The answer is yes and you don’t need a plug-in like “Shadowcatcher” to achieve this. You can do this natively in Cinema 4D. Not only do I show you how to set the material up I made a content browser preset ready for download. Cleverly named “Shadow Matte”.
Download it here. Install it in Cinema 4D > library > browser.
Just wanted to point out there are other ways to do this. A common method is to make two renders. One of those being a shadow pass but I show you how to do it all in one render with mulit-pass control. Something I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with.
FYI, this method doesn’t work with the Physical Renderer in R13 but in my opinion it should as it uses built-in tools and no post effects. I contacted MAXON about this is so hopefully it gets fixed in the near future. In case you were wondering the shadowcatcher plug-in doesn’t work with the Physical Renderer either.
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67 Comments
You’re out of luck if you wanna catch shadows created by Global Illumination. This method will not work. But all hope is not lost. Just export “Illumination” and “Global Illumination” passes and then set them up in After Effects like this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5JGbWZ-yPheSmgzMkRGZEhzY1U/view?usp=sharing
I highlighted those 2 passes/layers with green to make it easier 🙂 good luck!
Hi Guys,
I found another method, which may or may not be of use to some of you, depending on what you need to achieve.
I am working on some matchmove shots. where i have text floating around some scenes i filmed in various locations.
After i track the shots and solve the camera movement,
i set my light, an place white colored planes where the shadows would fall set to compositing background with the c4d compositing tag.
Then i go on to seperately render my Objects without these planes and after that the planes with the shadows without my objects that cast the shadows (this time they have to be set not to be seen by the camera via the compositing tag).
Then all I have to do is to set the shadow layer to “Multiply” in After Effects. This works also with the Physical Renderer.
I don’t get this, what happened to the shadow in the alpha? how was it used? It wasn’t shown in the video.
thanks
This is just what i needed. Thanks for sharing!
Hey Josh,
Thanks for the tutorial! I was always wondering how you would do it without shadow catcher. I’m having an issue, though. I can’t seem to make my floor completely transparent in the alpha. I’ve turned off seen by transparency in the tags but I’m still getting a ghost of the floor in the alpha. Any ideas?
Stephanie
Uncheck the “soft” option in the alpha option
Hi, Nice tutorial, Josh in wich version work’s this plug-in?, thank a lot, jorge
Hi John,
can you update infos about your material and C4D versions? I have C4D r14 and C4D r15 on Mac Osx Mavericks and they don’t recognize your material, and of course we cannot go ahead with your tutorial. By the way, in Maxon/Library/Browser your material vfx daily.lib4d is a Black folder with green sign “EXEC”. Plese help us to understand how dale it with new C4D versions. THX
Awesome! I just found the solution myself: I just had to uncheck ‘Seen by Transparency’ in the compositing tag of the object that should vanish into the floor.
Hi Josh, thanks a lot for this shedding light on this. Very helpful!
I have one question, though: What would be your solution if you wanted your objects to vanish into the ground? Because with the shadow catcher material applied to the ground plane the latter gets transparent. So everything underneath or penetrating the ground plane will be completely visible.
Hi. I downloaded the S&T cell shader shadow catcher. It works fine for soft and hard shadows, but not for area shadows. Is there a way to get that to work?
TIA
Hey guys, so does anyone know how to make this shadow catcher material for vray in cinema4d ??
thanks!
Your download material is giving me a Texture error message when I render. I tried creating the material manually, but I lack the SKETCH menu you branch through to make it all work.
Hi Justin, sounds like you don’t have the studio version of C4D? You need sketch and toon to use the preset.
Finally solved my problems. Best tutorial out there for this subject. 🙂
Hey Mark, I’m glad it helped. Thanks so much for the kind words! More tutorials to come just really busy at the moment.
Nice tutorial, just a thing that I don’t get.
When you render with GI, your shadows in the alpha channel came from the GI?! or you are still using a normal light with soft shadows? and this light is casting the shadows you get and not the GI shadow.
In short, is it possibile to get shadows in the alpha channel with only GI sky light? without any standard light?
I am trying but with no luck.
I hope you can help me.
Thanks.
Hi Sandro, shadows from GI will not be included in the alpha but you can always try and fake the GI shadows with AO. Thanks for stopping by.
This is Spot on 🙂
Thanks so much, very useful
Charlie
Thanks so much, Charlie! Glad you find it useful.
Hi Josh,
I’ve just discovered your site and its proving really helpful…..thanks!
I’m a little stuck at one point though….
I’m trying to render out shadows in a scene using GI and one of GSG’s softbox lights (to help with shadows to match footage).
When I render using your shadow matte, I think I see the cast shadows but the background image is not scaled to match the rest of the scene and seems darker.
Do you have any idea why this might be?
I’ve managed to switch Nick’s light to be on Soft so I don’t think it’s the Maxon/Area light problem.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
thanks
Rob
Hey Rob, interesting. If you want send me the file to josh@vfxdaily.com and I’ll take a look. Thanks for the comment.
Did you ever find out why shadow pass doesn’t render shadows with only softbox as lighting?
Thanks for making this, Josh! It was a huge help when I started compositing, I still come back to this every now and then to refresh myself.
Hey thanks! I’m glad it’s helpful :).
It doesn’t seem to render out the shadow for me. The shadow pass is the detailed shadows on the object but not on the wall i want the shadows on. maybe my compositing tab on my wall is wrong?
Could be a few things. Send me your file via email and I’ll take a look. josh@vfxdaily.com
Thanks man! I have been looking for this For a long time! Great job and keep it up!
hi josh,
Does this technique work with a light that is a shadow catcher? I can’t seem to get it to work when the light is not illuminating. Any ideas?
I will test that out over the weekend and let you know :).
Hi Josh, great tutorial. I’ve always had a problem with reflective floors in my cinema4d composition, do you have any tips for that? Basically I just want the reflections to be of my 3D objects but the no matter what i try with compositing tag the plane object is visibly lighter and looks terrible! Any help much appreciated.
Regards
G
Hey thanks, Gareth. I’ll make a quick tutorial on that for you in a few weeks. Sorry really busy right now.
Cheers.
Hey Josh,
Do you happen to have time for that reflection tutorial, I am having the same problem;
the floor (which reflects objects) gets lighter/darker and is influenced bij the GI. I just want it to reflect and have shadows (of the objects on top of it).
Thanks!
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This awesome thanks. It would have really helped 2months ago when I was struggling with this but hahaha there’s nothing I can do now. Your method is better than the one I ended up using anyways.
Thank you!
Thanks, Jose. I’m glad it helped!
Thanks alot, Josh.
You’re welcome!
Josh, thanks alot for your work.
Typing you from the mother Russia. (:
With ordinary light your plugin works just fine, but when I’m trying to use it with GI. I can’t see any shadows there.
Here the project: http://www.sendspace.com/file/my7dgt
I would be very admired if you can fix this.
I’m not the first who encounter this.
Hi. Thanks for the comment. Please email me the project file to josh@vfxdaily.com.
This technique will work with GI but it won’t work with the new Physical Renderer nor will it work with area shadows. This is due to MAXON not supporting sketch & toon with the new Physical Renderer. Hopefully they will support it in the near future. As for GI shadows you will have to do your best to fake them with AO and soft shadows but the GI illumination will work just fine.
If you need to use area shadows or the Physical Renderer then your only choice is to Render in two passes until MAXON fixes this.
Hey Josh,
Thanks for the great tut. I have searching everywhere for this technique and this is the first time ive understood it completely.
Im a Director DOP who loves getting involved with the graphics side to help me better understand what more we could do with a scene.
This technique will quickly become a favorite of mine in a lot of things i do!!
Cheers!
Thanks, Rick! Glad to hear it.
thank you josh for the tut great tip 🙂
Thanks for the comment Alex and you’re welcome!
Hi Josh!
Great tutorial, mate! I’m always checking you website out, it’s an amazing source of information.
I’m just having a bit of a problem to achieve that. It works fine with Soft Shadows, but as soon as I change it to Area my floor goes entirely black. Do you know a work around?
Thanks!
Cheers
Thanks, Rod. Glad to hear you enjoy my website.
I haven’t tried it with area shadows. I’ll give it a go tomorrow and let you know. Cheers.
You’re right it seems it doesn’t work with Area shadows only soft and hard. If I find a workaround I’ll let you know.
Any luck on the area shadows? I’ve been pulling my hair out since I haven’t been able to get any shadow catcher techniques to work (not just your setup), then I realized based on this thread that it was because I was using area shadows.
No luck on the area shadows using this trick. MAXON will have to address this in an update for it to get fixed. I hope they do. Send them a support suggestion on this. If this is fixed it would would work with the physical renderer too.
The only work work around is to do two renders. One just for shadows.
Any luck with Area Shadows?
Similar to Pablot, seem to have followed ur tutorial, but it appears my floor is transparent, maybe again something to do with composite tags! stuck… any further help would be appreciated
Hi, you can upload your file and send it to my email Josh@vfxdaily.com. Thanks. I’m guessing you are having a comp tag problem.
Thanks!, but I have a problem, It’s doesn’t work. I think is because I’m doing something wrong with the compositing tags, ow you do that?
What exactly is the problem? Yes, maybe you are doing something wrong with the compositing tags. You can upload the project and send it to me at josh@vfxdaily.com and I’ll take a look.
Thanks very much. This is the clearest tutorial I’ve found on the subject.
If you could ever find the time to do a tutorial taking a shot from SynthEyes to C4D to AE it would be greatly appreciated. I think many of us struggle somewhat with the process in.
Thanks, Vince. Yes, that exact tutorial is coming :).
Hello,
Nice video about multipass shadow compositing. I was wondering… will you be making the project file available?
Thanks!
J
Hi John, currently I don’t have any project files or footage to download. I try to encourage people to createtheir own scenes but I could upload the project file for this minus the footage or maybe just one frame of it. Cheers.
Thanks for responding back. I would like to examine the setup in detail and I think it would be excellent if you could upload the project minus the footage. That way I can see how you put together the setup. Would most definitely be interested in the scene file 🙂
Sure. I can do that. Should be able to upload it soon.
Hey John, I didn’t forget about the project. I’ll be posting it soon for you.
Nice tutorial, the only thing I’m not sure is, do I have to set the grid of the scene, to match up with the floor before placing my planes?
Thanks!
Hi Martin, thanks for the kind words. Well, you have to ‘find’ the camera for each scene. Which you would do most of that in SynthEyes or with something like Photomatch a plugin for camera mapping in C4D. You could do this by eye in C4D too. That sounds like another tutorial all together though. If you have a Cineversity account they have some helpful tutorials there. Some I created and few other Camera Projection tutorials that would be helpful to you.
[…] Material and will also show you how to set it up.For More Info and Shadow Matte Preset Download Click Here#dd_ajax_float{background:none repeat scroll 0 0 #fff;border:1px solid […]
oh thanks mate, I have to do composites like this on an almost weekly basis and it can be a bit of a faff, this works a treat though
Thank you, Nicole! I’m glad you found it useful. Btw, just checked out yours stie. Love your style of work.
great job. but I don’t know how to make this on vray i use cinema 4d…
could somebody help please.
happy new year… best wishes
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