Render Elements

[DPS]

I'm working with several Xreffed scenes, and I found that my include/exclude lists didn't carry across after merging my elements into my parent scene. In the end I decided it was going to be easier to render my generic passes from the parent scene and get my masks and extra elements from each xref. Anyway, I had a few ideas that I think would be helpful. Some are similar to eachother - maybe could merge into one or two or extend existing ones.

A render element like the Mtl Select, but perhaps called Extratex Select. So it would only render your map if scene objects have it assigned somewhere in their shader tree. Rather than manually including/excluding.

The MtlSelect element is cool. But another option, perhaps a checkbox - 'render mask only' would be good - it would allow me to keep everything in a nice tidy exr.

Another idea is a 'VrayShader Map' element, it would allow you to choose one of you 18 default map slots in the vray material and it would render (for example if you chose reflection) every scene object's reflection map, you could have an include exclude list too.

Also a way to control elements inside of XREFs, maybe there is already? Maybe could have options to look for a naming convention or similar.

[joconnell]

Xref's are a tough one since it's more of a max issue than a vray one - max doesn't allow any real access or override of settings on objects within an xref scene so the chaos guys might find a few walls trying to add more features.

Shader map element is kind of dealt with using the vraydiffuse filter for colour, then using the reflection and refraction filter element for the strength of both settings in your materials, then the MtlReflectGlossiness, refract glossiness and highlight glossiness to get the maps or colour values that are driving the "blurriness" of your materials.

MtlSelect I think is being extended a tiny bit? The render elements by default had no alpha channel with them but they do now - I think I remember it being mentioned that material select will now have the alpha for that material included so it half takes care of this. Multimatte will do the same thing using MatID mode too!

[DPS]

Hi

Yeah I've been scratching my head a bit trying to figure out a better way to deal with my Xrefs.

Regarding 'filters - that's not always the case, sometimes due to the way your blend material is layered your reflection filter won't match your map. I've forgotten exactly why but it's the case on my current scene. I've not exhausted all the others but primarily at this moment, I'm looking for a smarter way to get my reflection maps, and dirt mask out with less risk of human error - and not noticing this until my scene chugs it's way to the frame buffer.

Also Multimattes don't work with gradient or fall off ramps i.e. there's no transition.

[joconnell]

Yeah the max xref system and file access are two huge reasons that it's less friendly for big productions I reckon - Maya is a heap of crap but it's far more open so it's a nicer framework for large companies to work with. I wonder how scanline handle their linking? Last I knew it was all based on naming conventions, point cache / xmesh and the basic xref bits but I wonder if anyone's got anything smarter?

Didn't realise on the multimatte gradient thing - thanks for pointing it out so I don't rely on it in future!

[dans]

MtlSelect I think is being extended a tiny bit? The render elements by default had no alpha channel with them but they do now - I think I remember it being mentioned that material select will now have the alpha for that material included so it half takes care of this.

Thanks for mentioning the Alpha of MtlSelect having changed, but there seems to be no way to look at the alpha channel in the V-Ray Framebuffer (only tried V-Ray 3 Beta 3.05.01)? It's working in psd-manager if one enables Alpha to be saved as Transparency/Mask for the render element, so I only need to adjust the psd-manager built-in preset.

Daniel

[vlado]

Thanks for mentioning the Alpha of MtlSelect having changed, but there seems to be no way to look at the alpha channel in the V-Ray Framebuffer (only tried V-Ray 3 Beta 3.05.01)?

Haven't gotten round to that yet, but we'll get there.

Best regards,
Vlado