Quote:
Originally posted by riley_ag
if you render in passes, you can do this very easily in max,
render > render elements > take your pick.
it allows you to ultimate control over you animation, you can easily adjust many things in your animation this way, lighting, shadows, color, adjust spec highlights.. the uses are endless
Rendering in layers give you the same benefits, You render your forground, background, or anything else you want specific control over, on a seperate layer.
To do this, you need photoshop, or a compositing program such as after effects or combustion for PC, or shake for a mac, the software is very expensive, luckily a team member has some of this type of software.
if you need help with this concept, there are plenty of reasorces on the web under "rendering in layers or passes" or email me and I'll do my best to help you out. riley_ag@attbi.com
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You can do alpha composites in video post as well. Refer to the manuals for specific details.
Rendering menu > Video Post > Video Post window > Make sure the two child events are in the order you want the Image Layer event to use them. > Select the two events. > Video Post toolbar > Add Image Layer Event > Choose Alpha Compositor from the Layer Plug-in list.
This can be used to render objects in the scene separately. For instance, your team is using raytraces and there are 500,000 polygons in a scene, 9/10's of which you don't need reflected or refracted. You can render every part of the scene to a different image.
1. Begin with the background or environment you created in max (Make sure the camera path is the same for each layer).
2. Render the next layers in the order the overlap each other or in a way where they render as fast as possible.
3. In video post, use multiple alpha compositors to build your scene by layer.
Notes on rendering:
-You must render to image sequences. I recommend this anyway as it only takes, a few minutes to put an image sequence (.ifl) to an .avi.
-You must render using a sgi image type such as .tiff .tga .png or any other format that saves alpha (transparency).
-render every layer except for the background or environment in a black environment (Black is 100% transparent alpha-wise).
-keep the same lights and camera motions in each layer so that the layers match each other well.
Maybe I'll write a tutorial.