Enhanced Shadow Catcher Capabilities
I would like to request two additional capabilities for the Shadow Catcher feature: the ability to capture reflections and lighting interactions.
These options should be independently controllable, allowing users to turn shadow, reflection, and light-catching features on or off depending on the requirements of the scene.
This would significantly improve the realism and flexibility of compositing 3D objects into live-action footage or background images, while reducing the need for complex workarounds.
I would sincerely appreciate it if your team could consider this enhancement for a future Blender update.
3 Comments
This should be really done. Current shadow catcher is very limited.
There is a trick that may help you in this post here blenderartists.org/t/cycles-ground-for-hdri-environment-aka-shadow-light-catcher/636320/54
But other than that the workarounds are unnecesarily very complicated for a simple compositing task which should be much easier.
Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately, this solution does not work for my specific workflow.
I am using fSpy to match the camera perspective and place a 3D object into an existing background image. I would like the object to appear naturally integrated into the scene, with realistic reflections and lighting visible on the surrounding surface.
Is there a way to create a shadow-catcher-style setup that can also capture reflections and light interaction while keeping the original background image visible?
No problem. You can combine that solution I mentioned and tinker a bit with the "Is camera ray" light path. So some things keep being used for reflections, and others are used to be shown to the camera only. But it may not cover your current compositing need.