Abusing Passes.

#1

I’m trying to abuse the pass system for managing elements of a game, ie: not for managing post process compositing, but rather for organizing the many simple renders directly to their own files. But the pass system does not seem streamlined for this. It seems that a complex scene might have around 50 passes or so. I will end up with nearly 1000 passes.

I was using layers, which I may have to revert to, but I like that passes allow me to render all the layers to their own filenames. Passes are almost working, just a couple issues that one of you veterans might know how to solve.

1- With so many passes, each using the same render options (camera, resolution, frame number, filetype), but each using it’s own file name, it’s a drag to have to set up each render pass’ options. Is there a way to copy the render options from one pass to the render options of another?

2- New passes put all scene lights into a ‘Background_Lights’ partition. And new lights are added to all passes’ BG_Lights partition. Some of my elements are lamps, and some are chairs. The lamp objects need point lights to lighten up shades and such, but the point lights are being added to the BG_Lights partitions of all my other furniture, disturbing their basic lighting. Is there a way to keep lights from being added to new passes? Or at least is there a way to remove certain lights from certain passes?

I’m surprised there isn’t a more automated system for managing large numbers of passes. Seems to me it would make a lot of sense to merge passes with layers by simply linking editable instances of the default_pass’ render options to each layer. The interface for layers can’t be beat.

Thanks

(I tried making passes based on layers, but it only made a single pass with many partitions that matched the layers. I have no idea how that’s useful…)

#2

maybe I don’t understand correctly, but the scene render options are the same for all passes, no need to copy those.

the mental ray render options is a shared property by default, so unless you change that, the render settings stay the same for all passes.

to put lights into their own partition, select the lights you want to separate from the “Background_Lights_Partition”, create a new one ( Partition > New Partition ), and set the partition properties.

once you get the hang of it you’ll see layers are no substitute for passes.

btw. maybe you already know this, but if you hit “p” in the explorer view ( or select “passes” in the drop down menu that says “scene root”) you’ll get a neat overview of all your passes.

#3

Thanks Tuna,

You’re right, the passes all have the same options when created. They all save to the same filename, the same filetype (pic), the same camera, the same dimensions and the same frame numbers. The problem is I’m not using the default settings; I customize:
-the frame range, and step
-the filetype (pic -> png)
-the format resolution and pixel ratio
-among others (of course the filename has to be edited separately anyway)

For now, the work around is to create all my passes, then select each of their respective render options and change the above fields communally. But sometimes I just add a single new pass, and it would be nice to not have to set all the fields manually. The time spent setting the fields is not much, but it is easy to miss one of the numerous settings and have to re-render the pass.

And thanks for the lighting solution. It’s working fine. Additionally, I set any new, pass-specific lights to a special layer that sets them to not render. This way, they are only rendered in the passes that have a partition for them.

Thanks again.

#4

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