Anizu Forum

Hi y'all,

I have a device floating in the air and characters are standing on it. (The shadows of the characters are darker than the shadow of the object for some reason.) I've gone to the 'Layers' menu where all the objects in the scene are listed on the 'Background' layer. I click the 'New' button which adds a layer, I go up to the top layer where everything is, and beside the floating object I select 'Layer 1'. The floating object is now on layer 1, if I mute the 'visibility icon' on the background layer, I now see only my object and it's shadow on layer 1. Great! Doing the reverse has the characters casting their own shadows on the background layer.

I suppose I could render off the clips as two separate files, then import them into my video editor where I could mask off the objects and characters and render a single shadow track, but that seems like a lot of work. Any easier way to make a 'shadow layer' in Muvizu?

Hi,

If you you edit a layer, you get a popup where you can change the name, there is an option: Separate Shadows. This creates a shadow layer.

Wow! Always learn from you!

Okay, so I open the Edit menu in the Layers tab, I select 'Separate shadows', now how do I make a layer with just the shadow of the object? If I toggle the objects visibility, the shadow vanishes too. Toggling the 'Rendered' field doesn't seem to do anything, 'Show invisible layers' just makes the characters/objects shadows, not the drop shadows I want.

If you select "Separate Shadows" on a layer, the objects shadow in that layer will end up in it's own shadow directory when you render the movie. So you get one directory with the objects rendered and one for the shadows.

I tried that and I get 1 file only. The only render option that generates shadow folders is 'Image sequence' which is my very last choice. It just takes too much time to re-render all those frames for the kind of stuff I'm doing now. I've come up with a work-around in my video editor using a garbage mat to cover what I don't want and then merging the files. Thanks for your input though!

I don't know what video editor you are using, but most support the import of image sequences, so you don't have to re-render the frames.

I use Vegas Pro which DOES allow one to import image sequences, figuring out how many images per second is tough, it's not 24. Regardless, I won't be using image sequences, except in very special circumstances, due to the size of the files and the time involved in rendering them. I guess I could increase the amount of RAM (I have 16 gig) and buy an even beefier video card, but the results one gets with Muvizu don't really warrant it.

Muvizu outputs at 25fps

Which do you find better .tga or .png?

I've been using .png because when I want to look at them, not a lot of viewers open .tga