Unreal Shadowcatcher realtime performant with Alpha Channel

[@slobodanmrp]

Music you're using is so powerful, cannot wait to do the next steps and see the result! btw great video, and useful videos. learned some tricks with you, wish you the best!

[@jackandrory6839]

hi thanks for your tutorial I'm getting somewhere with it (done it twice )its quite hard to follow along to but help getting me in the correct direction is it then possible to render out just the shadows?

[@honghaixie8383]

Good tutorial, but when i choose ‘before tonemapping’ the shadows look blurry

[@jakubczajczynski2267]

Thank you for the video! You pointed out exactly all of the struggles with shadow catcher in unreal... What do you think, why there is no easier native tool and this is so complicated?

[@anton_zalko]

Thank you for the nice comment. I dont know, I think the engine is just limited in the way it was created. A long time ago I asked in the forums and a developer said he knows the situation but dont have an answer or solution for this problem.

[@anton_zalko]

Good news for you. Unreal Engine 5.2 will have a real Shadowcatcher production ready to use. it ist called "Composite Man". I hope they wll change the name hahaha

[@jakubczajczynski2267]

​@@anton_zalko Wow, very interesting. Do you have any links with more information about this? I couldn't find anything about it. I agree about the awkward name :)

[@quinoah_]

Hi, is this possible to do WITHOUT the Composure plugin? I need to be able to package this for a game, but the last time I checked, packing projects that use the Composure plugin does NOT work properly.

[@quinoah_]

To elaborate in more detail: I'm trying to re-create the "pre-rendered background" technique used in many old Playstation 1 games. The technique involves rendering out a 3D image in a software such as Blender, exporting it as a PNG, and importing it into a game engine such as Unreal. Real-time elements such as characters and props are then layered onto the image, and, if the in-game camera perspective matches up with that of the pre-rendered background, the impression is left that you are seeing a full 3D scene. I can achieve this first effect relatively simply through Unreal's "Image Plate" plugin. It's simply a matter of importing a plane into the level, setting it to fill the screen, and placing characters and props in front of it. However, it's when you begin to think of this method in the context of a game do things become slightly more complicated. A low-poly mesh that matches the silhouette of the pre-rendered background is produced, and imported into the game engine as well to be used to collisions. This is the bit I am having trouble with. My low poly mesh must accomplish several things: 1. It must be invisible in-game, as not to break the effect. 2. It must serve as a "walk mesh" for collision data 3. The 3D characters and props must be able to cast a shadow onto it. Hopefully I've made myself more clear. If you have any idea how to achieve these last three points, please let me know.

[@anton_zalko]

Yes of course it is possible. Just use the code of the Composure Comp material in a Post process Material in a Post process volume. The problem with Post process volume material will be that your input PNG will be color graded because of the Tonemapper. This is pretty bad and I don't have a solution for this but you can google it the are some work arounds which are all not cool for real production. Composure is not good for use in a game. Because it uses render targets and render targets have a fixed pixel size. But the viewport of a game don't have a fix size on each monitor.

[@anton_zalko]

@@quinoah_ Yes I understand which type of effect you are want to archive. Here are some tips from my side: 1: to make a message invisible there a lot of possibilities. You can for example make the mesh translucent and set translusty to zero. Or you can find the checkbox in the mesh settings to make it Invisible for the player i think it is called "owner no see" 2: the mesh collision data should be generated automatically bei unreal on Import or you can use collision volumes to block out collission by yourself 3: but the best solution is just use my shadowcatcher material in a post process volume. Because of this you Mesh will be automatically invisible but it is still in the scene it will have automatically collision

[@quinoah_]

@@anton_zalko Thank you so much for both these replies. I will definitely try your proposed solutions out and will reach out if I have any more questions. Thanks!