Blender Camera Tracking ground plane - unable to adjust shadow darkness

Question

Hello fellow Blender users, I am having a slight issue with my shadow catcher ground plane when I am doing a Camera Tracking and recomposing my 3D data with the Camera Footage.

The ground plane (shadow catcher) shadow is already very light while I preview the render in the viewport. But when I export the render and assemble the video it is even lighter! Almost non existent.

When I look at the rendering process, the shadow is rendered dark enough but as soon as its composited with the camera footage it almost completely disappears.

S. Magnusson · Answer

Just to cover the basics first, check the ground plane material; the material settings will affect the shadow's visibility.  Also, if the world is emitting light, that can dim the shadow. Color space can affect it; sometimes filmic will dim it even further in the compositor.

If not, the issue is likely from the render layer's alpha channel.  You can change the alpha's strength with a color ramp or multiply node.  Feed that ramp with the render into a 'Set Alpha' node, which you can then feed into the alpha over node.

Blender Camera Tracking ground plane - unable to adjust shadow darkness

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