Advertisement

You're blocking ads, which pay for BlenderNation. Read about other ways to support us.

Blender 2.8 Eevee Tutorial Shadow Catcher

5

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!

About the Author

Avatar image for Jeannot Landry
Jeannot Landry

I’m Blender Pirate Jeannot Landry, a French Canadian 3D generalist with over 18 years or experiences in various aspects of 3D, specializing in characters & rigging. Been using blender since 2008. https://blendermarket.com/creators/blenderpirate https://www.artstation.com/jeannotlandry

5 Comments

    • 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.

      • Andy Engelkemier on

        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.

Leave A Reply

To add a profile picture to your message, register your email address with Gravatar.com. To protect your email address, create an account on BlenderNation and log in when posting a message.

Advertisement

×