RGB cloud rendering with fluids

[dre4mer]

Hi there,

I set up an RGB rig for my maya fluid cloud with light selects and the sets editor. The layers display fine in the VFB and all my other objects are getting hit properly by my lights. In the beauty pass the cloud is getting hit by all 3 lights but in my light selects the cloud is simply pitch black with an alpha channel. I verified in my light linker that the lights and the fluid were selected and obviously it is hitting the cloud in the beauty pass. But so far I can't seem to get any fluid data into the light select pass. Any ideas?

Thanks!

-Ethan

[ivaylo.ivanov]

The light select render element requires the "Volumetric Geometry" rendering mode. Alternatively you can use the lighting RE which contains all lights.

[dre4mer]

Thanks for the reply, i'm not seeing that Volumetric setting is that somewhere in render settings or on the geometry itself? This is vray maya just to be clear.

It does seem like I should be able to just isolate the RGB channels out of a single image if necc. so that can probably work.

[Svetlozar Draganov]

Option to render the fluid as a Volumetric Geometry should exists in the Fluid settings.
Such option indeed exists under the Surface rollout but it still doesn't work with V-Ray Light Select element or at least I cannot make it work(I'm not very familiar with Maya Fluids).

As a workaround you may convert the fluid to polygons or to render each light into a separate pass.

[ivaylo.ivanov]

Ah, you mean Maya fluids... There is something like a work-around there - if you turn on the "deep output" from the extra attributes:
http://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/V...uid+Attributes

this will force the volumetric geometry mode I was talking about. You don't need to actually render deep exr.

[dre4mer]

ah thank you!