Bring back the shadow pass
Hey Blender Community,
I wanted to bring up an issue that's been bothering me, and I'm sure many of you have noticed it as well. In Blender 3.5, the option to generate a "Shadow Pass" was removed, and it's left quite a void in our workflow. Before this change, having a dedicated Shadow Pass was super helpful for post-production work, allowing us to fine-tune our projects with ease.
Since the Shadow Pass is no longer there, we've been using shadow catchers as a workaround. But here's the catch (pun intended): when you convert your entire scene to shadow catchers, there are no shadows left to catch! It's left me scratching my head, wondering how to effectively incorporate shadows from the entire scene into our post-production process.
So, I'd like to kindly request that the Blender development team considers bringing back the Shadow Pass feature in future Blender releases. It was a crucial tool for many of us, and its absence has left a noticeable gap in our creative process. Reintroducing it would allow us to regain control over our scenes and make our post-production work smoother.
Of course, if there are valid reasons for removing the Shadow Pass or if there have been new developments in the rendering pipeline that led to its removal, it would be great to hear more about it. Perhaps there are alternative solutions that could help us achieve the same level of control over shadows in Blender.
I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this matter and if there are any updates or solutions to address this issue.
Thanks for listening,
Luc
14 Comments
This was the biggest blunder to date by the Blender Dev Team, Period!!!! Forcing users to have to convert an object to a shadow catcher in order to be able to get a shadow pass is simply preposterous!!! Render passes are supposed to present the user with a non-destructive way to post-edit their render layers and AOV's. Once you actually convert an object to a shadow catcher as a property you have essentially broken that paradigm!!! My workflow has basically been ruined since they "implemented" this BS. Blender, in terms of software design, is headed in a downhill trajectory and this is most disconcerting!
And the shadow catcher layer also contains indirect lighting. So you can't even use it in Comp to better control the shadows. I read somewhere that it was removed because a new light tree system was implemented in 3.5. It would be great if this comes back one day
Must have feature. We need a full control for shadow layer. And Shadow catcher isn't enough for large scenes and getting colorful shadows.
I second that. This is really a bummer. Like "enough good use cases", really? Having the shadow pass is a must for comping since forever. SSS pass is also RIP. People who say 'just use shadow catcher' don't know what they're talking about and have never been in a real production aside from making donuts. Let em dive into a scene with hundreds/thousands of linked assets and I'll watch how they're going to 'workaround' the shadow pass. FFS, I'm speechless.
i dont know about the reason of this removal but i agree that this is crucial for VFX compositing, helps a lot to control shadow opacity and color. For the time being, you can keep two version of blender and render your scene with shadow pass in old 3.5 version while doing your production work in the newer version having access to all sort of new tools. Developer dont want to hurt you but there may be some serious with that. anyway, i upvoted it because i think it is useful for vfx work.
Thanks, For now we indeed render the scene twice (3.6 - 3.4) which will do for now but this is not a viable workflow for larger upcoming productions. I get that the developers need to make hard choices and I don't blame them. It's in the best interest of cycles in general to have this functionality so the pipeline stays functional without too many workarounds.
It's 2026 now I still upvote this...
Isn't it you who posted that exact request in the past few days and got answered the technical reasons of why it was removed and possible workarounds for it? If so, why repost?
No I am not, please elaborate.
Isn't this the place to ask for feature requests? Even if there are technical limitations as of now?
In the commit ( projects.blender.org/blender/blender/commit/0731d78d ) description Brecht states: "We may restore this if were enough good use cases for the previous implementation, but let's wait and see what the feedback is."
Since there is no other way to communicate this to the developers I am posting my plea here.
i think, there should be some indication when people like you or blender developer open the post, the website should automatically add some sort of tick symbol so user can assure that now his message is read by developer and it is upto him how he work on it. because he better knows the back end of the software.
I didn't say this isn't the place to ask. I noted someone posted about the exact same subject a few days ago, and one answer (I think from Jeroen) gave the technical reason of that pass' removal.
But that post was deleted, and I don't remember who posted it, so I asked if it was you because people do that sometimes.
Speaking of technical reasons, they are mentioned in the commit you linked:
There are also links in the commit leading to bug reports of users meeting issues with that change, the biggest one being baking shadows, which should have been fixed by V3.6 by baking the shadow catcher pass.
I reckon, if you have specific user cases where you can't make it with the shadow catcher, the best thing to do is to precisely detail the case, even make a demo file to test it. Firstly because some other users might know how to do it, and secondly because it is otherwise the best way to show the devs a very tangible faulty scenario where they need to find a solution.
Plus, if you have a demo file that nobody can't make a good shadow catcher for, you could probably post it as a bug report too.
That would be another proposal to post 😉
I've seen only a couple Blender Developers actively post here (Jeroen and Pablo), and I don't know how often then read posts nor if other devs do so. Perhaps only Pablo and Jeroen are "allowed" to communicate publicly here so to avoid having too many cooks in the kitchen ruining the broth.
A dev reading a post doesn't (and shouldn't) mean they are acting on it. I think they have the moderator rights to change the proposal status (at least Pablo does since he's admin), so if they start working on a proposal, they can mark it as "in development" if they don't forget (or ask Pablo to do it).
If you browse the project page, you can sometimes see they create tickets for a feature requested on RCS and mention the link of the proposal. Like this one:
#111736 - Grease Pencil: Add eyedropper to palette popup - blender - Blender Projects
Not sure if there needs extra markers in this case, but maybe a tighter interaction between RCS and the project page is possible to automate things on their end and require less manual work.
actually what you are saying is working write technically and it is the legit way. i am proposing that because user think that he has find something that is very important and must be raised in the forum so other people should also get benefit from it. actually he is very attached to his finding that until someone is there to listen him he constantly try to emphasize it everywhere to get heard. it is just like getting clear all numbers from unread messages. Although, the thing can be achievable also through some other ways as well but to his particular workflow it became important for him.
This is the basic psychology of the artist. this feature will just release the burden from the artist mind that he has find something which nobody is listening to, even i sometimes reply in free time to discuss and suggest alternative and sometimes people agree to some degree as well. although, i am telling this but i also do those things even today but with time i am becoming patient and trying to convey my message in some form of practical visuals , demo file and even some urge to learn the coding in near future. i also do same in Inkscape forum as well,
i think blender devlopers has given more than enough to work with, i sometimes feel that when i think, i finished learning, a new feature pop-up (currently node-tools) and i have to preaped myself to learn it. before blender 2.8, industry was just making profit selling subscription and with the name of features just releasing 1-2 UI changes even very painful workflow with interoperability. you people are making huge impact that only suffered people can realise it, your team are doing awesome work, i am thankful for the day when i find DonutGuru on youtube with the release of blender 2.8.
Why i raised the issue of the removal of the shadowpass is that this specific pass is used with every shot by our compositors. Now we like to work with all the new stuff blender 4.0 has to offer but it limits us to use it due to not having that specific pass. Working around it is fine but this creates congestion in the pipeline/workflow. We can't export 1500+ scenes with geo, animation and hair to rerender in 3.4 just for the shadow pass. I would love to keep all the rendering internal but this forces us to use a renderengine that does provide the stuff we need.
If i am the only one with this problem then of course the devs should focus on stuff that matters but I imagine this specific pass is used by a lot more studios. If this can't be fixed we'll work around it no problem.
People are trying to help me out on Blender Artists to find a way to resolve the shadow catcher issue so we'll get there one way or another.