RGB Shadows pass ?

[Gianfranco]

Hi Si|net, I've been trying everything about this for too much time now to see If I was able to solve this by myself, so I'm forwarding the question to this list.
Talking of passes: I often (always...) use the red - green - blue lights setup (shadows deactivated) to get my shading pass, encoding three different lights in one pass and tweak them later in comp. But due to the nature of the shadow shader we have, I anyway end up rendering three different passes for the three lights.
So: is there any trick to get an R-G-B setup for the shadows pass so that I can have the three shadows encoded in the same pass as for the shading pass?

thanks in advance
Gianfranco

[patrick.n]

i use a white flat_light shader on everything and r, g and b lights with shadows on... the result gives you a cyan for the red shadow for example, which is an inverted red channel, so
we can invert it back and use it as a matte for the red.
Is that what you're after?

[Gianfranco]

Patrick thank you sooo much! That definitely made my day :)
I wonder how in seven years using this piece of software, I never thought of using that shader...always stuck on the constant one for flat lighting. Must be somehow related to the syndrome that keeps you working with xsi the same way you were used to with the good old SI|3D....or maybe I'm just getting older lol

Cheers
Gianfranco

[patrick.n]

glad to help.

[JDex]

Here's a very simple preset that I've used often. Doesn't permit area light shadows though.

Readme included... it's very simple.

Edit: Ah... took too long. Good... ehm, better solution Patrick!

[Gianfranco]

Thank you also Jdex, I forgot to mention that in my searches I ended up exactly with your same thing: a no area light allowed setup. That's what I was disappointed with...now this flat light setup is going to be one of my best friends when it comes to render times thrift.

[JDex]

Glad to help... I think I may have just found an even better solution thanks to this thread. It's another of those nodes that we all have (probably), but have likely overlooked.

In the Binary Alchemy Essentials pack, there's a shader called BA_shadow_rgb... try it w/ colored lights. it's very nice (needs inverting though).
http://www.binaryalchemy.de/

[Gianfranco]

Yeah! That's another one I downloaded and overlooked lol...guess that happens when you're on a 13-14 hour shifts by default and on a daily basis. "Pure Italian style"...
I've installed them now...and the shadow_rgb is great because doesn't include self shadowing, wich normally is already present in the shading pass.
Thanks again :)

[patrick.n]

... 13-14 hour shifts by default and on a daily basis. "Pure Italian style"...


is that why you guys invented espresso?

[Gianfranco]

Yup lol! That's why...and infact I'm used to taking like 6 or 7 coffees per day...lukily I'm buddist so I guess that's what prevents me from strange behavious ala "Falling down"...
just kidding :)

[Gianfranco]

That's more or less what I'm talking about: seems not to be too far from the "italian style" after all :)

http://www.xsibase.com/forum/index.php?board=1;action=display;threadid=35700;st art=0