Newbie question

[bbedwell]

Can anybody tell me if it is possible to do the following?

I have a terrain with some tactical icons on them. I would like to to the following all in one render session:

-Render a sequence with just the terrain (no shadows from the tactical icons)

-Render out the tactical icons shadows (I guess as an element pass)

-Render out the just the tactical icons themselves

I hope this makes sense. Right now I'm having to render out these things in 2 render sessions.

[Algehov]

It sounds like you want to hide the tactical icons as a layer override in a render layer.
Then in a different render layer show the tactical icons and put an object property as a Matte Surface on the terrain.

Or would that still count as 2 render sessions for you?

[bbedwell]

I have the tactical icons primary visibility turned off via a layer override.

But I will try your suggestion about the Matte Surface and get back to you.

[bbedwell]

Looks like your suggestion still requires 2 render sessions. Thanks for trying to help though.

[Algehov]

Oh okay, I thought you ment only having to send the scene for render once, rather than twice. Not doing it all in a single render pass, and not starting another render afterwards automatically (like a renderlayer behaves).
In that case I dont think you can do this as you would have to render an object and whats behind the object in the same render.

Is there a reason why the render layer approach wont work for you? If this function was in vray/maya im pretty sure it would still have to render the image twice, so there wouldnt really be a render time difference if it worked in a single render session.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Can anybody tell me if it is possible to do the following?

I have a terrain with some tactical icons on them. I would like to to the following all in one render session:

-Render a sequence with just the terrain (no shadows from the tactical icons)

-Render out the tactical icons shadows (I guess as an element pass)

-Render out the just the tactical icons themselves

I hope this makes sense. Right now I'm having to render out these things in 2 render sessions.

I am afraid that this is not possible. Hiding/Showing objects always requires a new render pass - like Algehov suggested the most convenient way to do it is via render layers.

[bbedwell]

Oh well. I'm using render layers and they are very very helpful but in this situation, it seems that I can't get around what I was hoping to do (render it all at once).

Thanks for the help though.