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Hello,

I am trying to render in a single image a kettle that is lit only by a HDRI. There is nothing else in the scene apart from the kettle.
I want to make a floor to just catch the shadows. But I do not want to see any material for the floor, just shadows cast on it.

For me this would be a simple and fast wasy to do product shots and will make life a lot easier.

I do not want to render a seperate channel pass and comp together.

Surely there is a way to go this?

Many thanks

mark

Can anyone help me please?

I don't believe there is another way to do this -- shadow channel is the way to go.

Best,
Jason.

thanks Jason, a shame this can't be done in a single image

Consider you have a lot more possibilites if the shadow is separate and it's quite fast to composite it. In 2.1 the process has been further simplified, in the material properties of the floor material, check Shadow, then in the floor object properties set it hidden to camera, and check Shadow channel in render options. You'll get a shadow in the shadow pass in 2.1, even if the floor is hidden to camera. This way you're only running one render. In V2.0 you had to make 2 separate renders, one with the floor object visible (otherwise the shadow pass would be white), and one with it hidden (so you only have your main object in the render and alpha channel).

In any image editor that supports layers just load your shadow image on top of your main render and set the layers blending mode to multiply. You can then adjust shadow intensity as you like and even colorize it.

Mihai,
Where in the material editor (V2.1) is the option for shadow?

never mind i see it if you highlight the material properties.

Thanks for your help!
Regards
Mark