The issue deals with filtering being applied to render elements which have the ‘Enable Filtering’ checkbox disabled. This occurs when the fragments are of the same node.
See the attached image.
I’ve used the VrayNormals element as an example, though the issue is inherent to all elements as far as I can tell.
The only difference between the two renders is that in the second one I’ve attached both spheres into the same node. Everything else is identical.
Is there any possible way to have a filtered main render, with completely unfiltered render elements, even when the nodes self-overlap?
Is there a way to have the fragment merge mode use both the render Id AND the Z-depth? i.e. - don’t merge fragments if their render Id is different OR if their Z-depth difference is above the threshold.
It would really help me a lot.
Alternatively, is there a way I could influence this from within a render element of which I control the code?
No; but in your specific case, you can make things somewhat better if you change the deep fragment merge mode from “by render ID” to “by z-depth” and specify some suitable Z threshold. There’s no way to have both criteria at the same time, but it’s somewhere on the “to do” list to add it.
Yup, that is what I’m currently doing. The only issue is when some thin objects are very close to each other in depth and are within the Z threshold. It’s a minor issue though, and I’m working around it by post-processing the resulting renders.
