[Gary Bidwell]

Hi Mihai,

cheers for the technique.

Unfortunately, the shadow channel is rendering white.
I've hidden plane from camera in the pPlaneShape node in maya. Is this correct?

I like the idea of the transparent grad on the floor plane.

Cheers,

Steve

[Mihai]

You should have some Maxwell Render object properties in Maya, I'm not sure where they are though....

[Gary Bidwell]

I switched on the shadows for the spheres and now they're appearing in the shadow pass.

Is it because I have hidden the plane from camera that it is now not showing in the shadow pass?

Cheers,

Steve

[Gary Bidwell]

Just re-reading your technique and I was thinking that this still doesn't give us the reflection, indirect light etc. from the spheres back on to the ground plane. Only the shadow?

Cheers,

Steve

[Mihai]

Yes, I thought you ment to have the ground reflected in the spheres. In that case you need to render the ground plane also if you want to composite its reflections in the backplate.

[Gary Bidwell]

so, to recap, the floor would be set up with:

a camera mapped projection of the high res backplate (graduated off).
and this material would have to behave like the actual floor in order to catch correct lighting reflection etc.

this would then need comping. As in cutting out the cgi elements and floor to comp on to the high res back plate.

A shader that could catch all the rendered passes with masks would be cool.

Cheers,

Steve