Dear Unreal Engine developers,
As VFX people, we ABSOLUTELY need a “Shadow Catcher” or “Matte Shadow” mode (call it however you want) that we can enable just by ticking a box like in ANY OTHER existing 3D softwares used for VFX…
I’ve been looking over dozen of forums dated from 2017 until today with people complaining this feature is still absent, and it’s something we really need in order to compose.
Thank you very much! 
If I understand what a shadow catcher is:
UE is PBR, which means that if you want a shadow somewhere, it has to happen for real. You can’t plop an extra shadow in where you want it. So I’m assuming it’s never going to happen?
hi there, did you manage to get how to do this yet?
Dude i dont think you know what shadow catcher is. the idea of this shader which is available in basically every 3D software ever existed that is allowing to have the shadow rendered without seeing the surface this shadow is casted on. for example, a sphere placed on a ground, if this material assigned to the ground, you will see the shadow of that sphere casted on invisible ground, you will only see the sphere and the shadow with invisible ground. THAT is what we need. if someone knows how to do that it would be great to share, people keep referring to composure but that is not what it is. we need to be able to render the object with its shadow without having to see the surface this shadow casted on.
Capsule shadow, yes, sorry.
Hi there @Jet_Black, hope you’re well!
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Thanks and happy developing!
unreal has no solution for this ?
I have been trying all sorts of workarounds and would love to see a shadow catcher asap. Definitely a pain working around the issue with all of the vfx / real-time motion control work. Please give us shadow catcher option in unreal engine.
any solution for this yet?
-e
FYI this is being worked on now. I am not sure if it will hit 5.6 but that’s the goal.
hey that’s great, better later than never.
are you guys thinking about AR/XR runtime uses for such a material, or is this just for render passes?
thx-e
TBD.