Embarrassingly stupid question

[TomGore]

This is strange. I've been doing well for about 20+ years in vfx, from 3ds dos and vray 1.5 till now, but never needed this feature, which is a total must in vfx: I mean rendering layers. In most cases, I don't use postproduction, I prefer to render out everything ready to go, including lens effects. BUT:
Now I wanted to get back into a proper production way: Rendering with two layers - foreground helicopter and everything what's behind. Seems easy. Is there a way to render both layers (back and foreground) in a single exr file in a way that what's hidden behind the chopper doesn't go away from the background, and reflections are correct? Such I can slightly adjust the position of the helo in after effects or motion blur the background without need to fill a black hole from occlusion zone? It seems obvious at first: render the background first and then render the chopper and compose both. My question is:

How to vray-render it within a single render session, in one file that contains both layers? I don't want to play with multiple renderings, with mattes, zdepth or Object ID's matte extraction. I simply want to render stuff - what is a max layer in the scene, comes as a render layer in the exr file.

I am sure this is an embarrassingly stupid question, but I never needed that before, really. Attached, there is an example, my wip shot with the chopper I am reffering to. Only two layers needed. Using vray 4.1.
best,
nl

[Alex_M]

I'm pretty sure this is not possible. At least not in 3ds Max. State Sets is the closest thing that comes to mind, but it is only for helping managing the shots and passes, not to render objects occluding each other separately in a single frame.

[M.Max]

I'm not sure if there is a way to have all that in one single EXR file...usually you want to have all passes also for each layer so I can't see the benefit of having them combined, or I didn't get your point?!

what you are looking for can be done using the "State sets" which can help you render many passes in one click ....check this (the workflow changed a bit in the recent years but you can get the idea )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfG4TwA1__Q

From my limited experience, it is buggy and can easily mess with your scene if you have a complex setup and sometimes it doesn't "track" the changes in your scene so you will need to be very aware while using it.
That's why there are many 3rd part plugins that try to fill this gap like :
1-RP Manager
http://rpmanager.com/featuresRPManager.htm
2-Prism (Free) - ( previously called LPM )
http://grovergol.com/?page_id=338
3-Vexus
http://boomerlabs.com/vexus
4-Reindeer
https://animathings.com/pages/reindeer
and others ...
Each one of them has a different set of features and workflow ( Vexus and Reindeer are node-based systems for example )
AfaIk big studios build their own systems to handle this ..RealtimeUK, for example, had a system that configures scene state automatically( check here from minute 3:30 )
Maya has a very robust render layer solution that I would love to see in Max .. maybe one day .. check this series Here.
I would be interested in knowing what other artists do too as I'm still not so comfortable in this area and I'm always looking for better solutions for different scenarios so I will follow the discussion here.

[joconnell]

This is the type of thing you'd perhaps do with deep images which unfortunately after effects doesn't have support for (plus it'll make things a lot heavier even if you're in nuke) so you're definitely down to the pass managers listed above. Prism is definitely worth a look.

[Attila Cselovszki]

To follow up M.Max's interest I recommend to check the Pulze Scene Manager.
https://pulze.io/products/scene-manager
It is developed for Archviz but definitely worth to give a try. It will be in pair with the Pulze Render Manager to create a powerful combination.

[3dwolf]

100 years ago there was the RPF and/or RLA Image file format or so... There is still the object-property "Render ocluded Objects" left of it; for compositing in combustion/flame/inferno. I don't think any renderer / compositing-programm still support this feature.

[^Lele^]

100 years ago there was the RPF and/or RLA Image file format or so... There is still the object-property "Render ocluded Objects" left of it; for compositing in combustion/flame/inferno. I don't think any renderer / compositing-programm still support this feature.

I doubt any software (besides Combustion/effects*) supports the full set of fragments of RPF anymore.
With today's scene complexity (cfr. volumetrics, times current resolutions...), however, the files would likely become ginormous and very difficult to handle with any system.
What used to be ten overlapping fragments (or "3d" pixels") in worst-case scenarios (we're talking 1998++) would today be a few hundred to thousands on an average job (even archviz: imagine high-quality poly trees, f.e.).
That's part of the reason why EXR with deeps come with fragment merging, and why it's impractical to think of using the "render occluded objects" on much more than simple geo (that's the same today as it used to be back in the day.).

One could conceivably still render with scanline and "render occluded objects", save into RPF and somehow extract mattes in Combustion, though, for solid geometry (only, i think).

damn, now i want to play. XD

http://download.autodesk.com/esd/com...stionSetup.exe

[datalost]

Hi There.
After Effects still supports and handles rpf format files.
I'm just saying it in case this info is usefull
Regards