Unreal Engine 5+ Shadow Catcher / Shadow Pass

In this video we take a look at some work arounds to producing a Shadow Catcher or Shadow Pass in Unreal Engine 5 using Materials and Post Processing. This would be most often be used to control shadows during Compositing for Animated Shorts/Film Making or Cinematics that you may be producing in Unreal.
Update (5.4+ Fix)
5:25 - This Render In Main Pass Toggle May also turn off the shadow in later versions of Unreal (5.4+), not sure if this is intended by Epic Games. But a work around for this would just be to Make and apply a Material with a Black (Constant 0) set for the Emissive Connection in the Material. And that should make the object Black but still cast shadow (White) giving a useable mask with the object held out.
Learn how to utilize this Material to Automate the Shadow Pass Rendering in Unreal Engine 5.4's Render Graph Here:
• Unreal Engine 5.4 - Re...
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Tags:
Unreal Engine Tutorials, Shadow Pass in Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine Shadow Catcher Tutorial, Unreal Engine Compositing, Unreal Engine Post Processing, Unreal Engine GBuffer, Deferred Rendering, Shadow Pass in Unreal, Shadow Mask in Unreal, Masking Shadows in Unreal, Extract Shadows in Unreal, Shadow Alpha in Unreal, Shadow Rendering Unreal

[@atlanteum]

Tonight, compositors everywhere are cheering renderBucket's name -

[@vikipretium]

Absolutely 😂

[@VishnuRanjidas]

Exactly 😀👍🏻

[@tmaintv]

👏👏👏 this 100% should be one of the render presets in the new graph but you have come up with the goods already and beat them to the punch. Thank u

[@b.a.g2073]

Awesome tutorial. Long time issue that is unfortunately a painful workaround. One thing i have tried and is seemingly working...is instead of making the override material, is to switch from lit in the deferred render to Lighting only, which does the override for you. Have you tried this and found any issues with it?

[@marcfruchtman9473]

This is really cool. Thanks for making this video. One thing I have been looking for is a way to make "glassware" that transmits a bit of the light. Is there a way to modify this to add that effect in way that makes the shadow look more like the shadow of glass?

[@tanay9613]

Hi, Amazing Tutorial. Does this setup work with other type of lights (Rect, point etc)

[@fxworld294]

thanks you brother we love you

[@izntech]

amazing! does this work in pathtracer?

[@derekfloodVFX]

Very cool. Is there a way to do material overrides so this shadow-catcher is applied to all objects in a scene, rather than needing to manually assign the material?

[@artisticdoctor9169]

Yes in sequencer you can do a material switch

[@animesoul1924]

how can we get light pass, do you have any solution for light passes. pls answer this questions.

[@limks96]

I don't know why my scene is not same as urs... I have follow ur step but after putting the post process material, my shadow are green color.... not white color =(

[@elaymondes7205]

does it also work with Pathtracer ?

[@danielnoll8502]

I think this mostly works with a directional light. If I have a couple of spotlights, the shadow catcher turns grey and the contrast between actual shadow and catcher is very low: Does anyone else have this problem?

[@red4666]

i have this same problem. if you're lighting an outdoor sun powered scene then it's fine cause you normally just have 1 directional light to represent the sun, but any other lighting scenario that involves more than 1 strong directional light, like additional spotlights or rect lights and this entire method falls apart. it's a good solution for a one light scene though.

[@FishMan1nsk]

Wait but what about reflections?

[@박재호-z6s]

There are no materials in post processing.

[@pxrposewithnopurpose5801]

bro got infinite iq

[@fxworld294]

[@damnfail9316]

hi, please make tutorial for create 360 video. thank you