Is there a way to render just the shadow of a character?

[Dynasty]

Just curious. When doing a full scene with environment and such, can I have a character present in the scene, but only the shadow of that said character? Anyone know of such a trick to do in Daz Studio?

[Abad]

I believe, and I can assert, that it does not. Iray does not generate layers, as Maxwell Render, and others can. Iray in Daz is a whole block, without layers.
To generate shadows, you need a solid and a light. If the light finds nothing, the shadow is ... nothing.

[Dynasty]

That is very sad to hear @abad It seems Iray needs a lot more updates to keep up with corona renderer and other popular engines.........

[Abad]

I never use Iray for a render... Much better is Arnold (Maya, cinema 4d..) or others. Maxwell is a nice option. But, slow render. Arnold is a standart in the industry, like Pixar´s renderman.

[Dynasty]

But I am used to Daz Studio to make the scenes. Can I make the scenes in Daz Studio and render in another program somehow? @abad Also, Iray uses graphics card for rendering which in my case it's the best option since my graphics card is very good in comparison to my CPU...

[Abad]

Ah! GPU´s... like Arnold, Redshift, Octane, Maxwell, V-ray, etc... 😀
Iray is the old Mental Ray in 3d Max, obsolete.

[Dynasty]

What's the best GPU renderer to use with Daz Studio?

[Anonymous]

I think this might do the trick. Read Kitsumo's comment

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4035871/#Comment_4035871

[Dynasty]

Thank you, Trader! I will try that out.

[Jozef]

You can just try to set the opacity from the character to 0.0000009 or something like that.
I am not sure if this works. Iam not on my Daz Rig to try this out.

[Dynasty]

I hope Trader's link to the forum thread works since you actually make the whole character hide (which reduces greatly the render requirements). Setting the opacity to 0.00009 will still render the whole character and make the scene huge (if it even works).

[Anonymous]

This one is more current. Maybe it works better. It goes way over my head, don't really understand half of it.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/417341/how-to-cast-shadows-from-invisible-objects
And maybe study this product
https://www.daz3d.com/iray-hdri-toolkit

[Dynasty]

@trader that second link is actually really useful. That first one not as much. I still can't get just the shadows to appear without the characters. I even tried setting the opacity to 0.0000009 like one person suggested earlier, it doesn't work as the shadow disappears alongside the character...

Anyone have other suggestions?

[Author]

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