MultiMatteRenderElement :: My Suggestions

[sv]

It's such a great plugin - one of the best.


I think it could be even better if:
(*) You could exclude objects from contributing towards it
(*) It could do reflections / Refractions


For instance, i'd like to exclude a glass cover of a light so it isn't shown in the element - that way i could use the matte to change something behind the glass.

Similarly, if it's a glass object with something behind, it'd be good to see that occluded object refracted like it is in the beauty pass.

Of course i'm sure there are ways around this, but just a suggestion....

[andrewjohn81]

don't forget the ability to have as many mattes as you want with only one copy of the renderElement.

Also, it would be nice to be able to specify the exact color instead of just the three options that are there.

[sv]

well you can have as many of the multimatte render elements as you want, so actually you can have an infinite amount of matte's from one pass.
The point is to use a channel so you can shuffle this channel data around in a comping app - as there are only red, green and blue channels, the only info you need would be for red, green and blue.

the VrayWireColour element does this. (specify the colour you want)

[instinct]

Am pretty sure reflections and refractions are not really possible. As a renderelement Multimatte cannot cause the renderer to render additional Things. It takes what it gets from the renderer (remember that it also adopts the sampling of the beauty layer ?). Exclusion would mean the element would have to cause the renderer to render something it wouldnt...dunno if that's possible but i dont think so. Dieter or vlado will be able to tell for sure i guess. If it IS possible then i want my AO renderelement :P

As for the colours there is a reason it only has pure RGB. Everything else will not give you pixel-exact selections. ause AA in overlapping places would cause color mixes whereas Red Green and blue do have their own colour channels and can be completely seperated.

Regards,
Thorsten

[sv]

As a renderelement Multimatte cannot cause the renderer to render additional Things. It takes what it gets from the renderer (remember that it also adopts the sampling of the beauty layer ?). Exclusion would mean the element would have to cause the renderer to render something it wouldnt...dunno if that's possible but i dont think so.

is it rendering additional things though?

obviously i'm no expert.

Perhaps if it isn't possible to do reflections / refractions maybe it could just do transparency?

[instinct]

It doesnt render additional things. it basically uses gbuffer information the renderer passes to the elements. So it just uses information that the renderer is generating anyways.

Regards,
Thorsten

[sv]

yeah sorry; i'm not being clear.

I know Vray just passes info to the elements, and doesn't render anything new other than the Gbuffer info. My point was if your beauty pass has refracted or reflected info in it anyway, could this info be passed to the elements also?

I.e. object ID info, and also a ray which traces a refraction or refraction of an Object ID?

Of course it might not work like this; much more informed & educated people than me would know...

[instinct]

Well i cant say for sure, but i think i remeber vlado posting abou things like that not beeing possible (That was also requested for wirecolor etc beeing visible in reflections if i recall right)

[sv]

ahh right, well, very similar (well the same) concept then.

[andrewjohn81]

You know, I never really just thought about why it was only RGB. That Does make selections extremely quick.

I'm trying to get my coworkers to use this, but they use renderID instead because they say this one is too much work and the other gives "good enough" results in most cases. I don't agree with the results of the selection, but it is quite a bit more work sometimes.

I still would like the more than one copy of the renderElement within itself. Hopefully it would be smart and sort of understand which one's you've already picked.

What would be Really nice is if the ID had a dropdown and showed you a list of the ones you actually had assigned in your scene. I have no idea if that's possible.

That way you could also name one file and it could just add another suffix at the end for each file you'd have to create if you need more than 3. Makes changing names more efficient for sure.

I'd just kind of like it packaged a bit better if you use multiples.

[dimo]

Hi,

we wrote a script that does exactly this. It gives you a list which IDs have been assigned and lets you select by ID etc. It also allows to give names to the different IDs. At the end it produces a textfile for the compositors that explain what kind of matte is where.


Best regards,
Dieter