For a more realistic rendering and to prevent the effect of floating talent, shadow can be added in the virtual scene. To cast a shadow into the virtual scene, either a geometry or a texture with an alpha mask is needed.

Casting Shadows by Doing Pose Estimation

To use a geometry, please see our Viz Reality Connect solution.

Casting Shadows by Using Keyed Texture from the Precision Keyer

This section explains how to setup a shadow caster using the keyed texture from the Precision Keyer, which is placed in the scene tree (only) to cast the shadow. 

Scene Preparations

• Add a live input with your camera signal (or a clip as a placeholder).

• Enable the Precision Keyer, setup accordingly.

• Enable Talent Tracking on the keyed asset.

Scene Tree Preparations

• Add a top-level container called tracker.

• Add another container textureAnchor as a child node, and add a quad as geometry. Add a PhongMaterial and assign your media asset as color input.

  

• Change the material properties, set the Rendering Method to Transparent.

  

• Add TalentTracker plug-in on tracker, select TalentShadow as mode, and select PersonID. Tracking is needed to have the correct contact point of the talent and the floor (Floor must be at y=0 in a Virtual Studio). 

• Transform the container textureAnchor as needed to be fullscreen. Add a LookAt plug-in and enable KeepSize. The texture is now fullscreen and billboards the screen.

• Add a ShadowCaster plug-in to enable shadow casting, and add a Key plug-in and disable Draw RGB and Draw Key to exclude the texture from normal rendering. It only affects the shadow.

• The scene tree looks like this:

  

• Now setup your Virtual Studio scene as needed, and add lights that cast shadows.

• Your scene now casts shadows from the talent.

  

• Add the used media asset as Foreground in the scene settings to get the final composition: