Black shadows

Question

Hi, 
 
 
 Does anyone know how to make shadows a pure black with no gradient etc or can this only be done in Photoshop? Currently I am trying to make a render with pure white faces and pure black shadows. I can get one or the other through just changing the brightness in the Luxology Render window 
 
 
 
 Thanks 
 
 H

dshaw · Accepted Answer

would this help: 
 switch off all lighting except solar. make the solar color type user defined. change the color to pure white. change the shadow to sharp. set cloudiness to 0 and air quality to 1. 
 set the view display style to mono with shadows. go to utilities menu/image/save set the render mode to from view and save this. 
 This should give you a very graphic pure white pure black render with no gradients.

Jerry Flynn · Answer

Are you after the shadows so you can add to a mask channel for post processing? If you are then you might just try setting the shadow color to something other than black pure green, red or blue then use raytrace. I think this would make it easy to add shadows to a mask using select by color. 
 You can set this from the Expert tab of Light Manager you might want to turn off Affect Specular by making it zero. You might find that the Reinhard Tone Map will get you closer to pure white too.You could also create an override material to use with a display style and use a material that is white 100% diffuse and zero specular.