Blender 2.8 Eevee Tutorial Shadow Catcher
Jeannot Landry writes:
Here is a quick tutorial on how to create a proper shadow catcher, the easy way using a simple material trick for Eevee rendering. Also works with transparent background. Recorded in 4k at 60 FPS, Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/2WYCZGOCPEY
I used an HDRI background, and the shadow does not appear. How can I fix this?
Eevee cannot use HDRI to light a scene and cash shadows. It does some sort of non physical lighting but more like matcap and more for reflection then lighting. You need to use a light in Eevee. Otherwise you should use Cycles if you need the shadow from the HDRI.
Thanks for the advice!
You Can use a cheat though. Align some lights to line up with your hdri. Then just use the light path node to control what is seen by what. For example, you use that node to have an hdri for reflections and refractions, but if you want something else for the background, then you plug in the “is camera ray” to the factor of a mix shader and since the camera ray didn’t hit anything, the background is one shader, while the hdri is the other. I say shader, but it can just be two colors really. 2 hdris, or 2 edits of the same hdri. Sometimes people want a blurred version of their environment for the background. Or darker, less/more contrast, etc. That’s how you can accomplish that.
Too bad there isn’t an “Is shadow ray” for eevee, because using this method only actually works if you use large lights far away from your plane. Otherwise you start getting shadows again outside of the penumbra.
Thank you! Works like a charm :D