Rendering mattes of objects buried within an XREF scene

[tricky]

We make extensive use of the RenderMask script, but often, our more complex projects involve many XREF scenes. The only way to get mattes from one of these XREF scenes is to mwerge in a particular XREF and then we can use RenderMask in the normal way.

Its a bit of a pain, particularly given Max's awful undo capabilities.

Does anyone know of a method to render a matte of objects that are buried within an XREF scene, either by object name or object material?

[Donald2B]

I do this all the time with the VRayMultiMatte render element. I just use a combination of Material IDs and Object IDs. Each Multimatte element gives me three mattes, R G & B.

[tricky]

Yes, this is the method we use, but sometimes, we just need to get a quick matte for something that is embedded within an XREF and we don't want to start messing about with XREF material IDs or XREF object IDs.

I think Colin (the talented author of Tweaker) had something along these lines, but it didn't just render black and white mattes. I think with work, that script could work, but I wondered if anything was available now?

[Donald2B]

Ah, my bad. I haven't seen anything that goes into XRefs.

We typically mess with the XRef so that "when" we have to re-render the whole scene we don't have to go back and fix a bunch of last minute mattes.

[jacksc02]

I usually just do a very dirty trick and merge the xref and then render out a multimatte as needed.

[flino2004]

have you tried xref object instead?

[tricky]

I usually just do a very dirty trick and merge the xref and then render out a multimatte as needed.

That's what we are doing, but hoped there was a better way. It soon gets very dirty and not too quick when there are lots of XREFs.

[tricky]

have you tried xref object instead?

Never had much faith in XREF objects.

[dlparisi]

Maybe Colin's Matte Pass Manager will help (I've never tried it myself but it's supposed to work in xrefs)....http://www.colinsenner.com/scripts or http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ght=xref+matte

[tricky]

Maybe Colin's Matte Pass Manager will help (I've never tried it myself but it's supposed to work in xrefs)....http://www.colinsenner.com/scripts or http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...ght=xref+matte

I did come accross that a few months back and gave it a try. Its going in the right direction, but it doesn't strictly render black and white mattes, but rather the piece of geometry you select from a list as an RGB.

Also, the way you select the objects needs refinement: you need to be able to, for example, select the XREF and then see the objects within that XREF. Also, you need to be able to type '*glass' (for example) to select all objects with glass in their name. Basically, it needs to employ a similar strategy to the default Max 'Select by Name' interface, but with an optional 'Select by XREF' front end.

I did contact Colin about it, and he did say he might look into it, but I can't really expect him to spend all the time on it just for little old me!