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Objects Transparent For Shadows


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Hi there,

In Houdini:Help there's a mention that, in order to color a shadow, one can choose the following:

Modify the surface shader so the object becomes transparent only for shadows. This means the light passing through the surface will be added to the shadow. So, it will appear the object is transmitting light

Still it is not clear for me how to achieve that. How can somebody make an object transparent for shadows only? Some hint or a working example?

Actually what I seek is controlling the shadow intensity cast by semi-transparent objects (sprites\volumes\etc.), as sometimes they may look fine, except of their shadow being too dark (self shadowing looking good at the same time). An obvious solution would be using separate passes for the semi-transparent object itself and some shadow pass. Though that is perfectly fine - I wonder if that could be achieved otherwise. Another option that I was thinking about was masking the shadow area in a surface shader (IsShadowRay VOP?) still couldn't figure out if that's possible (I got IsShadowRay VOP working finally, but in a different way).

Any hints?

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