It seems that no matter what I manage to do, I can’t get this plane to render correctly.
I am trying to render an object on a plane (the plane acts as a floor per say) and I want the plane to remain white (blend in with the background). The only time I want the plane to deviate from white is when it is receiving a shadow from an entirely different object.
Shadeless does the trick (keeping the plane white) except for the fact that the plane wont receive shadows from other objects. Is there a way to do this?
Edit: I should also add that it works properly if I use the CookTorr method with a Specularity of 2.00 and a hardness of 1 but only with the blender internal renderer. I would like this to work with YafRay.
There’s an option to make objects that are invisible except where shadows are cast apon them. You could use this, and either make the background white or have a second, Shadeless plane undernieth the first one.
In f5 reduce your planeś Alpha value to 0.38. Alpha slide button located under RGB slide buttons.
Other option is to press shadow only button in your lampś settings, but then you need another non shadow lamp to light scene. Option one is still the easiest.
Note: alpha 0 transparent objects cannot show a shadow, because the light does not bounce off of it. an Alpha of .5 or as Ozo suggested will allow you to see objects behind the plane, altho the shadow wont be quite as dark.
