Selects the Matte/Shadow material type and adds it to the current material in the Material Editor sample window.
The Matte/Shadow material allows you to make whole objects (or any subsets of faces) into matte objects which reveal the current environment map.
It has the additional ability to receive shadows being cast on it from non-matte objects in the scene. Using this technique, you can cast shadows on backgrounds by building matte proxy objects and placing them in front of similar-shaped objects in the background.
Note: The Matte/Shadow effect is visible only when you render the scene. It isn't visible in viewports.
For the Matte/Shadow material, you can set or modify the following parameters:
Opaque Alpha: Determines whether or not the matte material appears in the alpha channel. If you uncheck this box, the matte object will not make an alpha channel, and the image can be used for compositing, just as if there are no matte objects in the scene.
These options determine whether or not fog effects will be applied to the matte surfaces, along with how they’ll be applied.
Apply Atmosphere: Turns the fogging of matte objects on and off. Note that when applying fog, you can choose between two different methods.
You can either apply it as if the matte surface being fogged is at an infinite distance from the camera or apply it as if the matte surface being fogged is actually at that point on the object being shaded. In other words, you can apply the fog in either 2D or 3D to the matte surfaces. The following controls determine how this is applied:
At Background Depth: This is the 2D method. The scanline renderer fogs the scene, and then renders its shadows. In this case, the shadows won’t be lightened by the fog, so if you want to lighten the shadows, you need to turn up the shadow brightness.
At Object Depth: This is the 3D method. The renderer first renders the shadows, and then fogs the scene. Since this varies the amount of fog over the 3D matte surface, the generated matte/alpha channels will not blend perfectly into the background. It’s primary use is to composite an object that’s fogged as if it was in the actual 3D scene that the 2D image it’s in front of is supposed to represent.
This section determines whether the matte surfaces receive shadows that are cast upon them and how they receive them.
Receive Shadows: Set to render shadows on the matte surfaces.
Affect Alpha: When turned on, shadows cast on a matte material are applied to the alpha channel. This lets you render bitmaps with alpha channels that you can composite later.
Affect Alpha Is enabled only when Opaque Alpha (in the Matte area) is turned off.
When Affect Alpha is on, the higher the Shadow Brightness value, the more transparent the shadow, allowing the background to show through more, and making the shadow appear brighter.
Shadow Brightness: At 0.5, the shadows will not be attenuated on the matte surface. At 1.0, the shadows are brightened to the color of the matte surface and at 0.0 they are darkened to completely obliterate the matte surface.
Color: Displays a Color Selector to let you choose the color of the shadow. Default = black.
Setting shadow color is especially useful when you’re using a Matte/Shadow material to composite your shadows against a background image: such as video. It lets you tint your shadows to match pre-existing shadows in the image.
The objects all appear as white silhouettes, including the platform.
The silhouette of the box no longer appears, but the other objects and their shadows appear.