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I'd brought this up in the past and would agree with you. The response (from Tom, as I recall) was that the intention of the shadow channel wasn't so much for flexibility in post-process (as you'd typically think of with a shadow pass), but rather for comping purposes. This also explains why you have to turn on the shadow channel for each material individually.
So for example, in a recent project I rendered a flat plane for my grass and then wanted to comp in a grass field. So I checked the material for my grass plane to render shadows for my shadow channel. Then I pasted in my grass field and used the MatID channel to make a selection of my grass area and used that selection as a mask. So at that point I had my grass photo showing up only where it should be. However, what I'd covered up were areas where, for example, a tree was casting shadow on my grass plane. So I put the shadow layer on top and set it to multiply.
That isn't to say that i agree that the functionality you suggest should be an option. I just point this out to show you the rationale behind the way it currently works.
-Brodie
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