Tser

Hi Mirko Jankovic, My Shadow Catcher has no issues related to the Shadow Catcher which comes with Houdini 21, My Shadow Catcher is in the Object level and is rendered with all the objects in the scene so the scene reacts to the shadows as they are really there, no compositing required, it's all in the beauty pass, my Shadow Catcher is a hda and is a single node, all the environment mapping, catcher grid and material are included, just select your hdri, select the objects you want to cast shadows from, import the ShadowCatcher node and your Objects into the Stage and Render with XPU, very easy, also you can store Recipes of the ShadowCatcher node with all your settings and HDRI to recreate any time, I have parameter settings to adjust the Shadow/AO, Light, Environment, Grid etc to suit any HDR image environment, I've been working on this for a couple of years on and off, but now I'm pleased with the results, no need for my Arnold Renderer any more.

Did some more work on the shader and some more tweaking, left is XPU, right is Arnold.

My XPU Shadow Catcher is created in the Object level, so the shadows and AO are present in the scene for other scene objects to react to, so you can see the shadows in reflections/refraction's in the beauty pass, no compositing needed, it works just like all other Renderers Shadow Catcher, you also have full control over the shadow quality. It works with any 360deg HDRimage, the ones I use are from https://polyhaven.com/hdris [polyhaven.com]