Render Elements - Shadow

[muzzy]

Hi all,

 

I want to render only shadows of my animation. I tried the render elements of Max to render only shadow but the problem is Max first rendering the whole scene and spending the same amount of time like the complete render and then crete the shadow as another image file. Is there any setup to only render shadows in a less time ? Am I missing any setup options ?

 

Thanks a lot

[Jennifer]

Hi,

 

Are you trying to pre-render the shadows to save time later? If I understood better what your goals were, I can maybe give some suggestions.

[muzzy]

Thanks for replying.

 

My problem is.. My animation took 6 days to be rendered and the shadows were not dark enough for enviroment. I thought that if i can render only shadows and then play with the shadows in video editing software.. I tried to render elements as shadow but it renders everything all image first and then exract the shadow.. I just want to render only shadows without rendering the complete scene. Is there a way in render elements to render only one element? I hope my question is clear right know.

 

Thanks

[quizzy]

No....

[Christopher Nichols]

as quizzy said... BUT if you assign everything to matt/shadow material it should render a lot faster then with all your other fancy materials in there. I would make a white background, make a matt/shadow material on everything with apha turned off, then do a mult on the two frames in after effects. you can then tweak the darkness of your shadows by doing level changes on the shadow pass.

[muzzy]

Thanks I will try that.