A cry of desperation
Dear Blender Foundation.
I have been using blender for years now, and it has trully been a blessing of a software. I am grateful for the work that you have done to bring this amazing program to the users.
But I'm here for other reason. I am here to beg, for you to return Shadow Pass to the Cycles Renderer. Since, EEVEE's hard shadows suck balls, my one and only method of coping was to render out the shadows using Cycles, and then add the Shadow Pass as an overlay, to splice in the shadows with the post-processing.
Not only do I have to resort to such extremely hadicapped maneuvers, but the fact, that I have to do that across two different version of Blender makes the situation double retarded. So, could you please return the Shadow Pass option to the Cycles Render Engine. You could make it a legacy option, that won't be compatible with complicated scenarios, but would work with such cases as I've described. In any case, I hope that you could take my message to consideration. Sincerely, the user who really needs Shadow Pass back.
4 Comments
See wiki.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/3.5/Cycles why the shadow pass was removed. Its design was incompatible with the light tree. In many case shadow catcher passes can be used instead.
Blender 4.1 adds sharp shadows support in EEVEE. Yes it is still alpha, but there might be a different solution for you in the near future as well.
Is that actual Eevee render, or a mockup?
I'll agree Eevee hard shadows are poor, but you can get a a far better shadow than that in Eevee. Use soft, jack the resolution to 4k, and use a 0° angle on the light.
I have followed your advice and achieved a mildly better result with EEVEE. I suppose other techniques could be utilized to improve the situation, still, Cycles rules supreme. I don't know why the Shadow Pass was removed, but it sure was a useful tool, especially for stylized renders.
I only do NPR, and literally never use Cycles...ever.
But, I agree that a shadow pass seems like should be an option in Cycles nonetheless.