falcoknight
08-12-2011, 04:41 PM
Hey CGSociety. First post here.
I have ran into quite a dilema!
I have a render set up for a multi model, multi asset character animation scene that hast to be rendered in an isometric view at 8 - 16 angles. Originally what I had was 16 render layers, each with its respective camera and layer. This was working but down the road when I need to render off multiple assets and multiple characters, renaming each animation frame range and changing the numbers of the frame frange will become far too overwhelming.
I have since ditched the old method and now I have a render layer for each animation (i.e. the "Run" layer has a render override for frames 1 - 24, and it renders off each camera separately in mayas renderable cameras render attributes. The result is I can render off 10 separate animations, each with 8 - 16 cameras, all named (<Render Layer>_<camera>), with the press of one batch render. This greatly increases the efficiency.
The problem with this method is that I can only use a direct overhead light, or ambient light. The character's actual rotation doesn't change, only the cameras do, so I need to have a light associated with each camera like I had in the original render set up. This worked before because I could add (eg. Southeast Light) to the (Southeast) render layer and have the (southeast camera) to the renderable camera. But like I said before, this would become too tedious in the renaming of every animation.
Opening up the hyper-shade I see that the cameras themselves have a renderable attribute, that when hooked up to the render layer renderable camera attribute, are connected to its respective plug (Which only applies to cameras, as far as I can tell). I have tried connecting the lights render info, render layer info, visibility, etc, to the respective plug, but all without any success. What I get is all my angles, and all my correct naming conventions, all with 16 lights making a blown out image. The only thing I can think of to solve this is if the lights themselves had a 'renderable' attribute like the cameras do, so that I can drive their renderability with the camera renderability.
Can anyone here offer me any suggestions or support with this? I would greatly appreciate it!
I have ran into quite a dilema!
I have a render set up for a multi model, multi asset character animation scene that hast to be rendered in an isometric view at 8 - 16 angles. Originally what I had was 16 render layers, each with its respective camera and layer. This was working but down the road when I need to render off multiple assets and multiple characters, renaming each animation frame range and changing the numbers of the frame frange will become far too overwhelming.
I have since ditched the old method and now I have a render layer for each animation (i.e. the "Run" layer has a render override for frames 1 - 24, and it renders off each camera separately in mayas renderable cameras render attributes. The result is I can render off 10 separate animations, each with 8 - 16 cameras, all named (<Render Layer>_<camera>), with the press of one batch render. This greatly increases the efficiency.
The problem with this method is that I can only use a direct overhead light, or ambient light. The character's actual rotation doesn't change, only the cameras do, so I need to have a light associated with each camera like I had in the original render set up. This worked before because I could add (eg. Southeast Light) to the (Southeast) render layer and have the (southeast camera) to the renderable camera. But like I said before, this would become too tedious in the renaming of every animation.
Opening up the hyper-shade I see that the cameras themselves have a renderable attribute, that when hooked up to the render layer renderable camera attribute, are connected to its respective plug (Which only applies to cameras, as far as I can tell). I have tried connecting the lights render info, render layer info, visibility, etc, to the respective plug, but all without any success. What I get is all my angles, and all my correct naming conventions, all with 16 lights making a blown out image. The only thing I can think of to solve this is if the lights themselves had a 'renderable' attribute like the cameras do, so that I can drive their renderability with the camera renderability.
Can anyone here offer me any suggestions or support with this? I would greatly appreciate it!