Hey everybody,
I’m really new to Maya, only been using it for about 2 days, but I have a pretty firm grasp on modeling and texturing. I’m a bit lost in the render pass/layer area and rendering/ batch rendering.
Basically I have a 2011 MacBook Pro i5 2.3ghz, only 4gb of ram and the integrated Nvidia graphics. (I know, I know. I’ve got a dual bootable machine being built right now).
Anyways, I tracked a scene in boujou and modeled a soda can in maya with basic lambert and phong textures and it’s on a plane to catch shadows, the normal stuff. I then lit the scene using 2 spots to match the room lighting. Next I created 4 layers (and the master layer) a color, shadow, alpha, and reflection layers.
This is where Im confused. Should I be using passes instead of layers? If so how do I do that? I have no experience using passes yet. Also if somebody could clarify the difference between the 2 that would be awesome!
So the way I’ve been trying to get it out of maya using the batch renderer, and maybe it’s normal but it’s a total of 166 frames, and it took over an hour to render 17 frames on the master layer. Something just seems off. (not to mention that the batch renderer has been just stopping in the middle of the render).
I know it’s a lot, but these are things that I’ve spent hours looking for without finding any answers.
Also, all of this is for output back into after effects for compositing.
Any help on this would be great! I know you guys need history and stuff to diagnose these things but I appreciate any tips! Thanks!