Hello,
I just found out about Substance 3D Stager about how it could replace our current workflow for some jobs. But there is 1 major feature that seems to be missing, that is the ability to have an object in your scene which casts shadows over other models BUT that object itself may not be visible in the final render. It may only influence the lighting result without itself being visible in the final render. This is vitally important for realistically compositing 3D models in a picture background where you need to simulate the lighting/shadow situation of that picture.
A good example is: The background picture has a tree where the sun creates a defined shadow pattern of the leaves/branches on the ground. I now want to insert a 3d model in that shadow area under the tree where that shadow pattern should be projected on my 3d object. So I should put a 3d tree in the exact same spot of the tree in our picture to simlate that shadow pattern, so far no problem, BUT now I want our original tree of the picture and not our 3D tree in the render so I should be able to have my 3d tree in Stager to be switched off to invisible when rendered to final result.
Of course a workaround is just rendering it WITH that 3d tree and mask it out in Photoshop but Stager should have the possibilty to enable that feature directly.
We do architectural 3D staging in both exterior and interior scenes where many times we encounter this situation of having the need to hide objects but which still influence the lighting when we recreate/simulate the scene (lighting) of the background picture. Like a "shadow catcher" in some sense...
Thank you kindly for really considering this feature. Would make us switch software 🙂