What are the basic passes need to be rendered for any scene


#1

I’ve seen there a lot of types of passes, from the basic diffuse, reflection, spec, depth, and more NCDPs. to composite, a shot or a 3d model on a background or a fire with smoke on a background what are the basics passes that need to be rendered for a good comp in the final.
What all passes do artists usually take?


#2

Beauty and a cryptomatte.
You only need all the other passes if you have todo crazy comping.

In recent years a lot of studios wennt to beauty only.


#3

that is interesting, Can you share more info about it? I thought that comp was still a very big part of the work.


#4

That depends on the studio for sure. The big vfx houses are still seperating every channel.
But its not uncommon that you only seperate volumes and characters from the scene in layers.
You render only the beatuty pass with a cryptomatte to do some minor tweaks.

Specially if you render with a GPU renderer you do your changes upfront in lookdev.


#5

I’ve always found too many render layers to be a waste of time, unfortunately, but z depth and cryptomatte are usually useful, plus Matte Shadow if you are compositing onto a back plate. Generally it’s better just to get it right the first time you final render. There’s a good tutorial on After Effects 2020 and Cryptomatte here- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_8bfke0EY0