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View Full Version : Newbie Question - Render Passes and Z-Depth

mixermanic
10-11-2007, 11:02 PM
Hi guys,

Forgive the VERY newbie question, but I have a scene which, apart from torches on the wall and vapor-ish smoke effects, remains the same all the way through the shot (the camera does not move at all).

Instead of rendering everything for every single frame, could I render passes for the "background" (the physical room and furniture etc) along with a Z-depth pass, and then render the fluid effects out separately and comp them together in post (I will be using AE)?

Would the Z-depth pass then allow the smoke to wrap itself around the furniture in the scene (the particle emitter is above and slightly behind the centre table in the scene, so the smoke "interacts" with the table).

Again, forgive me if I am stating the obvious!! :)

Thanks,

Martin
mr Bob
10-13-2007, 08:39 AM
Hi,
Your should be rendering passes always and don't worry about the newbie question , just change your sig from supervisor lol .
A Z depth pass can help when your comping. But unless your smoke has the coverage over your desired feature its not going to do anything ! Render your depth pass using some of those free maya shaders found on highend 3d. I would advise creating a few locators tied in with expressions to the values on the shader so you can read your distance information !

B
mixermanic
10-13-2007, 03:03 PM
Hi,
Your should be rendering passes always and don't worry about the newbie question , just change your sig from supervisor lol .
A Z depth pass can help when your comping. But unless your smoke has the coverage over your desired feature its not going to do anything ! Render your depth pass using some of those free maya shaders found on highend 3d. I would advise creating a few locators tied in with expressions to the values on the shader so you can read your distance information !

B

Thank you mr Bob!

My title is musical director & supervisor, nothing related to animation - but I take your point ;)
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