Josh Johnson shows his multi pass workflow in Cinema 4D to After Effects setting up for such features as shadow catching. Check out Josh on his site VFX Daily for more great tips.
Josh Johnson notes: “Hey everyone, here’s a tutorial I made that explains my multi-pass workflow in Cinema 4D to After Effects. Namely, my focus was to show how to set up your C4D scene to catch shadows properly on live action footage or a photograph in one render. I’ve had a lot of questions how to do this so I hope this is helpful for some.
Often you will here C4D users ask if there is something similar to 3DS MAX’s “Shadow Matte” material. The answer is yes and you don’t need a plug-in like “Shadowcatcher” to achieve this. You can do this natively in Cinema 4D. Not only do I show you how to set the material up I made a content browser preset ready for download. Cleverly named, Shadow Matte. Grab the preset from my site: vfxdaily.com/?
Just wanted to point out there are other ways to do this. A common method is to make two renders. One of those being a shadow pass but I show you how to do it all in one render with mulit-pass control. Something I’ve seen a lot of people struggle with.
FYI, this method doesn’t work with the Physical Renderer in R13 but in my opinion it should as it use built-in tools and no post effects. I contacted MAXON about this is so hopefully it gets fixed in the near future. In case you were wondering the shadowcatcher plug-in doesn’t work with the Physical Renderer either.”