Shadow catcher - maybe?

Mosk the Scribe

I'm using DIgital Carvers Guild's Toon Pro to render out a project with a noir feel to it.

I was hoping to use shadow catchers so I could blur or lighten shadows in post with Adobe After Effects - but I'm not getting any shadows on my shadowcatcher when I render in Toon Pro (shadows do render fine in the regular ToonPro pass)

If I switch no photorealistic renderer the shadow catcher works as expected.

Any suggestions about best way to approach this?

I could render every scene twice, once with toon pro and once with photorealistic with a shadow catcher added - but even then, my original render from toon pro will already have dark shadows in it which I wouldn't be able to blur or lighten.

I guess I could use the photorealistic rendered shadows as a matt or mask in After Effects to select the shadow area from toon render and then do my manipulations.

Anyone have experience with this that can offer other ideas?

(And is there a way to make Carrara just render the shadows and NOT do the regular render as well - or do I just tick off the Shadow box under multiple pass area and just use the shadow file that's generated?)

Thanks