Render Elements without beauty?

[hsz]

Hey Guys,

I was wondering if there is a way to render "render elements" without the beauty pass .... let's say that I just want the reflection pass that I forgot to render or something like that.
For what I've been reading there is not way to do this right? so I was wondering how do you guys deal with that? there is any technique or workflow that you guys can share?
btw that would be a nice add to a future release if possible.


Thank You.

[Morbid Angel]

The way the render buffer works is that you need to have all the passes derived from the main render. For example if you want just the reflection, you still need to raytrace everything around the scene and reflect it back. Weather the rest of the surfaces have refraction, diffuse or sss. So there is no point to allow to just render reflection by it self it will not be correct. If you just want to render reflection you still have to render the beauty.

What I typically do though is have all the render elements which I always use in a separate maya file, which I simply reference in to my scene when I go to render for final. This ensures I always get the elements I need.