Render Pass Manager -plug for excellent plug-in

[davision]

I've been meaning to write something in this forum about the Render Pass Manager plugin for 3dsmax. www.rpmanager.com

Grant Adam develops it, and I've been using it for well over a year. If you need to render out multiple passes or multiple angles or multiple anything, you should consider picking it up.

It lets you hide/unhide things, change object properties (like when doing Vray mattes), change materials, add VrayElements, render particular cameras/ranges, change render settings and the list goes on and on. (He uses Vray so RPM has extra features for Vray -- although I'm fairly certain it works with all renderers).

The program is a little daunting at first but that's purely because it's so powerful. Once you start using it, you quickly realize the time-savings and how well-designed the software is.

Grant is incredibly helpful if you have any trouble (tip: right-clicking things helps tremendously) and he fixes any bugs that might crop up very quickly.

I have no financial stake in his company. I'm just writing this mini-review of it to help publicize an excellent piece of software and help support it's future development.

Grant offers a free evaluation license, so please give it a try.

[DuskZero]

I'd just like to add that I've been using RPM for two years, and its absolutely fantastic. Its the best thing to happen to 3dsmax since editable poly, and I won't use max without it.

The preview functionality alone is great, and the way it removes any human error from doing IMAP passes, etc. You can mix renderers easily, keep lots of different lighting and shot setups in one scene, send multiple network jobs at once, and on and on.

And yes, Grant has always been very helpful, and written new builds to address specific issues I've had, often within a couple of hours of me emailing him with a request or bug.

Sam

[tricky]

Just looking into this piece of software. Do you know if DR and BB jobs are fully supported?

[percydaman]

yes, they're supported. In fact RPmanager makes inputing many passes/renders into BB a breeze. It even automatically renames your BB job if there's already a duplicate name. No error messages forcing you to change the name. I love clicking like 3 buttons, leaving to get some coffee, and coming back and ALL my many passes have been sent in.

Can't speak too highly of the plugin. Grant gives great support, and gives site licenses if you have purchase enough licenses. Very generous!

[stilgarna]

One of the most wonderfull plugins for max....

1 file and 126 passes...

A great tool...

Best regards

[dcullipher]

What happens to the files size of the Max file when you use this for passes. I have an employee that says this was a problem years back when it came out.

[stilgarna]

What happens to the files size of the Max file when you use this for passes. I have an employee that says this was a problem years back when it came out.

3 Year using RPM and never had a problem... we've got 8 licences at work and no problem with anybody...
Just some users problems...

But visibility set with very large scene are a little heavy... It is better to use layer set...

But not a big problem...

Just small changes to scene size...

[dcullipher]

Thanks for the info. Got an email from them really quickly regarding my questions so thats a good sign.

Looks like we'll be jumping in.

[MoonDoggie]

Been using it a year and a half, and I couldn't use Max without it. It's incredible. Thumbs up.

[suurland]

Also been using it for several years now.. and it's great, can't live without out.

/Thomas

[m_hinks]

We've just got 2 lics of RPmanager for some upcoming projects based on the user feedback on this forum and our evaluation of the software.

Grant is very good at responding to us in a very different time zone all day!

Getting your head around the plug in does take time and we're still learning by our mistakes! But its mainly user problems not the software.

I was hoping you guys that have used the software for a long time could give us some pointers in the general day to day use. There must be some little tips that will save us messing up you have found?

Any help and info would be very gratefully recieved, and my head will retain more hair!!

Thanks

[davision]

Tell us what specifically you're trying to do -- or what you find confusing, and us long-timers can probably be more helpful.

One general tip: use Right-Click a lot! -- Grant has context sensitive right-click menus buried all over the place. And they are very attuned to where your mouse is. For instance in the Pass List up top, you can right click on the Renderer column to copy/paste render settings between passes. Right-click on a different column to get myriad other options.

I use RPM primarily for hiding/unhiding objects by layer to create my different passes. Therefore I typically use Layer Visibility Sets and not traditional Visibility Sets (these are more granular since they control objects individually and ignore Layer assignment).

If you do use Layer Vis Sets like me -- you'll probably find it useful to turn on the Use Head Only (don't remember exact phrasing) preference for controlling visibility. This makes layers hide/unhide via the Layer Manager top level icons -- instead of individually hiding each object within a layer.

One other tip you can change multiple layer settings (or all of them) simultaneously by selecting multiple passes up top -- and then tweaking settings down below. This makes it real easy to set all passes to Adaptive AA 1,2 for example.

Lastly I also highly recommend the Enable Auto Path Generation on Submit tick box -- it creates a new folder and filename based on each pass's name. Just hit the ... button to set the Parent folder and let it do the rest.

If you create each new pass by hitting ++ to duplicate an old one it will inherit the Auto Path settings so you won't need to set your file destination ever again.

[m_hinks]

Cool, lots of info, thanks davision. Ill have to try your suggestions out right now!

[dcullipher]

davison

have yo any experience using the new version of the onion layer manager with RPmanager? In theory it should work the same, but just taking a chance to see if you have tried this combo.

[davision]

No, I have not tried this combo. In fact, I haven't heard of the "onion" mentioned for a long time. Ever since Max improved their initially horrible implementation of layers, I didn't see the need to go outside of it.

Is Onion pretty good then? Does it just piggyback on Max's built-in version?