In my old animation software AM, going back a decade. I think you could render ONLY shadows. In other words no other calculations were done, so it was quick. Can blender internal or cycles do this?
I know you can do a render pass for shadows, but this is isolating the shadows not render only.
What calculations exactly are you trying to avoid doing? In BI you can turn off textures, SSS, and environment map in the render settings. This can speed up the render
Blender internal does have options for making materials ‘shadow only’. Cycles does have a shadow pass, but as of now it only works for lamp items, i.e emitter mesh shadows do not show up. You can get a good approximation of a shadow pass by using white lights and then turning on the diffuse and/or glossy direct render passes.
yes there is a shadow only button in bi, its exactly what i want. But is there a way to switch that on, on all objects. Or does it have to be done one by one. Some sort of materials copy and paste?
Or does it have to be done one by one. Some sort of materials copy and paste?
If you want a material to be applied to all objects in the scene at render time set an override material in the Render Layer settings
Thanks right in front me!! That means you only need one scene to do a shadows only in bi.