pwCatch and Iray

JoeQuick

does pwCatch still work in Iray?

If it doesn't, anyone know of a good tutorial for achieving similar results?

Mattymanx

In Daz Studio, on the Render Setting Tab, go to Environment at the bottom on the left, and at the bottom there, you will see "Draw Ground"

This is useful for shadow catching in IRay when you are using an HDRI for your environment.  Even if  you have "Draw Dome" set to off, you can still cast shadows on the ground

NorthOf45

If you want a shadowcatcher that is not on the ground (say, to mimic a shadow on a wall in an HDRI), use a matte on a primitive plane (or any surface, I guess) by running the "Create Advanced Node Iray Properties" script in Scripts/Utilities. Under Parameters->Display turn Enable Iray Matte to ON. In Surfaces, set the Base color to pure black and Glossy Layered Weight to 0.0 to get a good start. The fun is getting the plane into the right orientation, because every time you move the camera, it won't line up with the scene behind it. There was a discussion about mattes recently here, with a video tutorial link. Hope it's what you are looking for.

nonesuch00

I'm pretty sure it doesn't. I think that SickleYield has a tutorial over at DA on how to fake it in iRay using "Don't Draw Dome" & Canvases I think it was but I can't remember for sure.

Leana

JoeQuick said:

does pwCatch still work in Iray?

No, the pw shaders are custom 3DL shaders and won’t work in Iray

JoeQuick

NorthOf45 said:

If you want a shadowcatcher that is not on the ground (say, to mimic a shadow on a wall in an HDRI), use a matte on a primitive plane (or any surface, I guess) by running the "Create Advanced Node Iray Properties" script in Scripts/Utilities. Under Parameters->Display turn Enable Iray Matte to ON. In Surfaces, set the Base color to pure black and Glossy Layered Weight to 0.0 to get a good start. The fun is getting the plane into the right orientation, because every time you move the camera, it won't line up with the scene behind it. There was a discussion about mattes recently here, with a video tutorial link. Hope it's what you are looking for.

This sounds perfect. Thank you.

NorthOf45