Well, in the Jeff Patton thread there has been a lot of talk about this, but I’ve been thinking about different uses I used to give to Matte/Shadow, and so far there is one problem with the current Shadow Catcher workflow.
Take this scenario, think that you have a set, let’s take an interior scene, now you have a character walking around the set, now a way to efficiently render this and to be able to make changes to the character without having to render everything again and again is to separate the character from the set.
Ok, now if we use the current workflow A LOT of information will be lost, the reflected light in the different objects in the set, the reflected wall colors for example, and you loose every material in the set if you replace it with the shadow catcher.
Possible solution, as in other render engines, instead of having to replace the material of the object we may have the option to flag the object as shadow catcher, this way we will be able to define matte objects without destroying the scene materials, without loosing the light detail generated by those objects, without loosing the shadows casted by the non matte objects over the matte objects.
What do you think people?
And now a question towards keymaster and corona team, do you think is something easy and fast to implement?
Cheers!
Yep this is one I’m after, I like Vrays properties matte option, Its non destructive.
cheers
The “render selected” option is great, I’m glad to know that it’s going to be in corona soon.
Regarding your matte workflow, it’s a good idea, but as you say, it’s a bit a pain in the ass to configure, also I’m not sure how can that behave if you have scene objects reflected in your character or non matte object, and also how can that behave if you have intersected things, I mean things that are in fron of your character.
Anyway, it’s a good workaround, but how realistic you see to have the “matte” object property (or modifier) in Corona? It’s something similar as having the objects non visible to camera and with a shadow catcher over it, I’m not sure If I’m explaining it correctly, but from my naive knowledge, I don’t see it as somethingtoo hard, but obviously I know it may be reaaaally hard, also you have a long list of features to implement before this, I was bringing it to the table so we can have a complete production matte fast workflow.
Another problem I see with the shadow catcher, is what happends if you have bump or displace in the environment, the shadow won’t catch that deformation, so a per object property to respect or not respect bump and reflection along with the matte property could be great.
In fact, the idea I have (that can be failing a lot) it’s exactly what I said before, an option to make the object not visible to camera but that can catch shadows and reflections, when you have a “non visible to camera” object it is still visible ot reflections, it emits light and generates everything it should, but it’s not visible, well the idea is to have the same, but it can catch the shadows over it, and of course ocllude anything behind it, I’m not sure if this idea is crazy, it may be, what do you think?
Cheers!
What about a modifier?
I don’t think it should be done on a material level, the idea is to separate the material work from the matte workflow, so if we have it at material level we will be in a similar fashion about making it hard to control and a bit destructive, a lot less than now, but you will work around evey material in the scene to manage that.
That is why I think a modifier could solve this because you can apply that modifier to several objects at once and you can enable/disable it at will, also you can apply different modifier to different objects for example to respect bump/displace in some, and don’t do it on some others.
Cheers.
Yes, it could be a good solution, I was trying to avoid having to touch the material at all, but I understand that what you said is probably better, and will remove a lot of complexity 
Also in the end if a material has some bump or displacement, well, you will want it to have it
Cool!
Cheers.