have control over layer name in RenderElement "ExtraTex"

[frueter]

Hi all,
back on the Vray wagon for a few months.
If I remember right we used to be able to specify the output name of the extra layer to use when using a RenderElement set to "Extra Tex".
This is no longer possible and is hard coded to "extratex", so you always get layers named "extratex", "extratex1", "extratex2", etc.
It's quite a regression in a multi channel environment and it would be great to get back the flexibility to name the resulting layers/channel sets.

Cheers,
frank

[Christophe.Cot]

Hi Frank,

You can still specify the output name of any Render Element by editing and renaming the layer/channel name via Nuke.
Open the Render Element node properties -> Channel drop down -> edit -> rename the layer and reset the channels output. I think all our render elements output rgb(a) as output components so you can hit the "rgba" button to automatically set the channels to red, green, blue and alpha.
(fun part : somehow I need to click 4 times the OK button to finally get the dialog box getting closed...)

You might need to force Nuke to rerender or update its layers/channels cache to see the change.

Chris

[georgi.dunchev]

You can also create a new layer and select to use it instead of the default one.

The idea was to use native Nuke tools to create/edit the layer names, because the way we used to manage them quite often resulted in a mess with layer component names that corrupted the whole .nk script.
However it looks like it's not very intuitive for the nuke user. If you have a better suggestion for native handling of the layers let us know.

Cheers,
George

[frueter]

Thanks guys. Yes I can rename the layer, true. Christophe, looks like hitting the button four times is because you need to prefix the channel name with the layer name in this particular dialog. It's a bug and goes to show how often this is used
But I think the issue I am having with this workflow is that a layer is created with a somewhat random name before it is needed/rendered. Renaming an existing layer in Nuke doesn't feel right to me and worries me a little. It also leaves a large room for error for users that may not know about one of of the most dangerous traps in Nuke, which is naming channels in a way that will shuffle them upon re-opening the script (e.g. naming your channels 'abc' will shuffle the "a" channel into index four as Nuke believes it's the alpha channel.

Personally I'd prefer the layers/channels only to be created at render time, like depth and motion vectors in the ScanlineRender node. But you could argue that all other channel handling in Nuke creates them on the spot as well.

Why not have a string field to enter the desired name (or chose an existing layer) in the RenderElement popup? That way you can assign the desired name upon layer creation and the whole editing/renaming isn't required anymore?1

[Christophe.Cot]

The ExtraTex is a particular case here as it's a custom aov and can represent very different render output. None of the conventional aov shares this issue since their default name is explicit enough.
Nevertheless, it is definitely possible to add the possibility to override the layer name on node creation and I totally agree the render element popup is the right place to place it.
I should be a rather short fix so I will look at adding it into the nightly build fairly quickly (couple of days).

[frueter]

Brilliant, thank you! When you do I'd suggest providing the option to create a layer with a new custom name or use an existing layer. If you use PySide for the panel you could use a single editable enumeration widget I guess. Otherwise a string field for a custom name, an enumeration list for existing layers and a checkbox to decide which on e to use might have to go in there.

Thanks!