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Can a material accept a shadow but be invisible itself?

Question asked by Jamie MacLellan on Jul 24, 2013
Latest reply on Sep 15, 2013 by Anna Wood

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Good morning,

In my work I do a number of renderings where I place an object created in Solidworks into a real life photo. I've always rendered the model out against the background photo and then gone in after and added extra shadows and whatnot in Photoshop. I was thinking today that it might be helpful if there was a material that I could use to make a basic floor and wall plane that could accept the shadows cast by the model but would be, itself, invisible so the background image would show through.

Does this exist somewhere in Solidoworks? I'm using SW2013 btw.

Thanks,

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John Burrill Jul 24, 2013 12:23 PM
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Unlike 3DSMax, SolidWorks and photoview 360 have shadow-casting as a property of a light instead of an object.
So unfortunately, you can't set your walls to exclusively cast and receive shadows.
To turn on and off shadows for a light, edit it's properties in the lights branch of the tree in the scene manager tab of display manager
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1-4EQZK9 Jul 24, 2013 12:24 PM
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Hi Jamie,

This is not possible in PV, but is possible in Modo. I'm not sure exactly what you are looking to do but you can just export the alpha channel that would contain the shadow only (plus the outline of model object)

Regards

Mark
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Rob Rodríguez Jul 24, 2013 3:25 PM
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You can do this with the floor. Turn on the "shadow floor" in your scene settings. If you overlay your model on a background image in PV360 then the shadow will show up over the top. You could also set your background to black, render the image and then save it as a png or tiff file from PV360. If you merge the rendered image with the background image in PhotoShop (or a photo editor) the shadow will carry through.
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Jamie MacLellan Jul 25, 2013 10:29 AM
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Thanks all for your comments. Sounds like what I want to do isn't possible but I'll add some images here to help explain further.

So I would start with a stock photo such as the one below:
I would then take a model and place it on the scene and render it. Note how the shadows cast back towards the wall continue along the ground plane "through" the wall since solidworks doesn't know there is a wall there in the background image:
What I would like to be able to do would be to create some geometry that acts as a "set" for the model. In this case the set would include a floor, wall and baseboard. Note how the shadows are cast against the set:

What I would love to be able to do is to set the material of this "set" to be able to recieve the shadows (and in some instances show a reflection) but not actually be visible itself. It would have to work the way the ground plane works now.

Thanks again,
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- John Burrill @ Jamie MacLellan on Jul 25, 2013 10:57 AM
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  Have you tried making your backdrop a gree-screen and then using Photoshop or Gimp to mask out the key color?
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- James Canney @ Jamie MacLellan on Jul 25, 2013 11:15 AM
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  One way you could try is to use your photos as decals, trick is to have a flat on image of the wall, and a flat on image of the floor. I tried it using your 1st image and having a seperate decal for the floor and wall. Without a flat on image the perspective willa lways be wrong.
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- Rob Rodríguez @ Jamie MacLellan on Jul 25, 2013 11:22 AM
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  Your correct Jamie. You can't do what you want to do currently. The only ability you have is to have the shadow and or reflection on the floor using the floor shadow/reflection option in the scene editor.
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- Jamie MacLellan @ Jamie MacLellan on Jul 25, 2013 11:34 AM
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  Does anyone know how the floor plane in Solidworks works? Does it exist, somewhere, as a physical object? The appearance, if it is in fact an apperance, used on the floor plane is exactly what I would like to have access to.
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  - 1-4EQZK9 @ Jamie MacLellan on Jul 31, 2013 1:44 PM
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    Hi Jamie,
    
    The floor shadow (and reflectivity) is "hard wired" into RV and PV and can not be rendered out separately and it is not a physical object.
    
    Regards
    
    Mark
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- Peter Castellucci @ Jamie MacLellan on Jul 31, 2013 1:31 PM
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  Jamie, do you have Photoshop and a basic grasp on it? If so I may have a kludgy workaround for you. It might work in Gimp too but I don't know much about Gimp.
  
  Let me know.
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  - Jamie MacLellan @ Peter Castellucci on Jul 31, 2013 1:54 PM
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    Oh, I am well experienced in Photoshop and using a few layers and layer styles I can produce my desired results. I was just looking for a way that required a little less time.
    
    Thanks for all your suggestions and help. Maybe this is something that could be added in a future version of SW.
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Mehdi Paran Sep 15, 2013 9:43 AM
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I work for a TV Stand manufacturing company and I often use the following method to simulate shadows on the wall:

1- Create a surface behind the model. The sketch needs to be small and as close to the shape of the wall as possible:

2- Tweak the color and appearace of the surface to match the wall color. After this step, there's very little to edit in Photoshop.
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- Anna Wood @ Mehdi Paran on Sep 15, 2013 3:12 PM
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  Excellent tip Mehdi.... Thanks for sharing.
  
  Cheers,
  
  Anna
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Can a material accept a shadow but be invisible itself?

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