Call for Render Elements Guide

[danieljhatton]

Ok, for a while now I have been trying to implement Render Elements into my Workflow. Is there anyone that can explain how to use Render Elements properly as I am having trouble finding information.

Here are just a few of the things I am not sure about.

I presume all Render Elements can be obtained by rendering a typical 'vray' scene?

MultimatteElement returns nothing. How does this work exaclty? I want to be able to select elements of my image in Photoshop but again I cant find a way to get any information from it. Nothing in Channels in Photoshop.

ZBuffer Returns Nothing.

Whats the best way to save and use elements. Is it the same for all? What is a vrimg file and how is it used?

Sorry for the repeat posting and question but I really am at a loss with it all and I would love to start using it properly.

Thanks dudes.

[instinct]

okay...

the Multimatte works in 2 different ways :

1) you assign objectIDs to the objects you want a mask for (=GBuffer)
2) you assign MaterialIDs to the Materials you want a mask for

You are free to mix them tho not within a single Multimatteelement. You can have as many Multimattes as needed.

Regarding ZBuffer i am not sure what kinda of file you output, if clamping is on and your range is off you might get nothing for example.

vrimg was invented in order to reduce memory usage during rendertime. It is able to save "per bucket" without having the whole output image in memory (like the standard max VFB does). Nowadays you can also output to exr directly including all renderelements. In addition you can make vray save seperate files for each element using the "split elements" controls.

The docs have a bunch of info on the whole topic too.

Kind Regards,
Thorsten

[Shimakaze]

The ranges in the Z-depth is the important thing to worry about. The ranges decide which part of the picture will be considered. For an easy way to find the ranges, use "Dolly target" (found in the bottom right corner of the max interface) and move the target to the closest object in your scene. Then look in the camera settings at the "Target Distance" and note the value before doing the same with the farthest objects in the scene. Put something like those values in the minimum and maximum of the zdepth element. (near as minimum and far as maximum)