Rendering in passes

[CapnPanic]

well i think u can do it manually in max, but it would be a big pain. like for the color pass you would have to set all your materials to self illuminating and get rid of your lights and then render, and for shadows perhaps set all the materials to white and render with the lights on, etc etc...

but the easier way to do this is to use a renderer that supports it. i know brazil has some render pass stuff built in so i assume some other renderers do as well. in brazil's case it just a matter of turning on render passes and selecting which pass you want from a drop-down menu :) then all the various material conversions are done at rendertime etc and no additional effort is needed.

so u could do it the harder way, using matte/shadow materials etc or pay some $$ and buy something that makes it easier

[Jon_Pran]

Really? No way to do it. Guess that explains why I haven't been able to find anything on it.
I am curious, though, because Discreet is always bragging about how it integrates with Combustion so well and how you can import each pass into it for compositing. I've seen tutorials (in Comp. Arts, I think) on how to composite them, but not how to make them.
Brazil can do this, eh? Is it similart to Cebas's PSD renderer (that I assume renders that passes as layers)?
This is pretty significant issue, correct?
If Max can't do it, can Maya? There is a recent tut in CA that explains the importance of this, but doesn't explain how to or what app made the images.
Strange, I tell ya. Frustrating, too. My next dilemma is compositing with alpas, but we'll save that one : )

[CapnPanic]

actually, i think you can render a bunch of that stuff in an rpf file. i forgot all about rpf's when i answered in the first place. the only difference being that instead of rendering out to a bunch of difference sequences, it stuffs all the passes into one file

so yeah check out saving as an rpf sequence and it sould give you a boatload of options of what passes you want to save into the file. the only down side of this method is that you need a package that can read and extract all that stuff form the rpf. but if you are using combustion then this shouldn't be a problem. :)

[Bluemilk]

COULD ALWAYS USE THIS.

[FatAssasin]

Capn_Panic's making things waaaayyy too difficult. Just bring up the render dialog (F10) and open the Render Elements section. Click Add and select which passes you want.

Bluemilk posted the screenshot, but didn't tell you where it's from.

This is in Max 5 by the way. And this is from the help file...

Rendering to elements lets you separate various information in the rendering into individual image files. This can be useful when you work with some image-processing or special-effects software. You can later do compositing with the element renderings.

These are the elements you can choose to render separately:

Specular: The specular component of the rendering.

Diffuse: The diffuse component of the rendering.

Self-Illumination: The self-illumination component of the rendering.

Reflection: The reflections in the rendering.

Refraction: The refractions in the rendering.

Shadow: The shadows in the rendering. This element saves black-and-white shadows only. See the later section on "Compositing Rendered Elements."

Atmosphere: The atmospheric effects in the rendering.

Blend: A custom combination of the previous elements.

The Blend element displays an additional Blend Element Parameters rollout.

Z Depth: A grayscale representation of the Z depth, or depth within the view, of objects within the scene. The nearest objects appear in white, and the depth of the scene in black. Intermediate objects are in gray, the darker the deeper the object is, within the view.

The Z Depth element displays an additional Z Element Parameters rollout.

Alpha: A grayscale representation of the alpha channel, or transparency, of the scene. Transparent pixels appear in white (value=255) and opaque in black (value=0). Translucent pixels appear in gray. The darker the pixel, the more transparent it is.

The alpha channel can be useful when you composite elements.

Background: The background of the scene.

Other elements do not include the scene background. Include this element if you want to use the background in compositing.

The background is not trimmed against geometry, so elements should be composited over the background. See the later section on "Compositing Rendered Elements."

Ink: The Ink component (borders) of Ink 'n Paint materials.

Paint: The Paint component (surfaces) of Ink 'n Paint materials.

[Jon_Pran]

Much thanks. I had thought it would be something simple, but couldn't ever find it (in Max 4).

[dans]

If you want to see what can be done with 3ds max render elements (passes) you should check out the psd-manager website (http://www.cebas.com/products/feature.asp?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=38&FID=323) (this is an PSD expor tplugin that can output render elments as layers + ANTIALIASED MASKS for all the objects and materials).

http://www.cebas.de/products/images/psdmanager/car_renderelements_01.jpg

Look at the gallery and the examples section for some extreme modifications.

Daniel

[jadedchron]

nice dans :thumbsup:

[RockinAkin]

Is there a way to render out passes exclusivly?

By that I mean, I want ONLY the shadow pass calculated.
When I select Shadow from the render elements dialogue, it first renders the ENTIRE SCENE, then opens a new virtual frame buffer with the shadow pass in it.

I want only the shadow pass rendered, without anything else calculated.

-DivideByZero-

[FatAssasin]

How're the shadows going to be calculated without rendering the entire scene? You can always turn off mapping if you just want the shadows and want to speed up the rendering. But I don't know you would get the seperate pass information without going through the whole scene.

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