Passes in max like in Softimage

lloyd

Hello polycount.

I used to use Softimage and for rendering i'd setup passes.

one for diff, one for Ambient occlusion.

Then then rendering i could render the diff then click a button and softimage would change my scene to be all setup for Ambient Occlusion and I'd click render again.

I can't seem to find anything like this in max. It seems like i have to render, then setup AO then ctrl + Z back to where i was before i setup the AO.


Its kinda like having a macro setup to implement a AO render.

The only thing i could find was scene states, is this the thing I'm looking for? as i couldn't find much info on it.


So what do you guys do? setup AO each time?

I'm rendering with Mental Ray. I also saw the Render Elements section but It doesn't seem to have options i can change for the AO, nor does it let me just render that.

as an example, when rendering a z-depth it always renders a diff first and then the z-depth. why no option to just z-depth!?

r_fletch_r

Take a look at l pass manager
http://www.lukashi.com/LPM.php

sprunghunt

You can setup presets for the rendering settings. to do this:

1) open your rendering dialog box (the teapot icon)
2) have a look down the bottom of the dialog to the 'assign renderer' section
3) look for the word "preset" and a dashed line.
4) You can select this menu and it pops up a bunch of settings. One of which is "save preset".

If you select this it will save the settings you have setup to a file which you can load through this dialog box at any time. Here's the dialog box and you can see the preset dropdown on the right.



I use some pre-saved setups for AO and one for beauty shots

Ark

'Render Elements' are what Max's calls the equivalent of XSI's passes. Should be under the render options.

Mark Dygert

Yep it sounds like render elements is what you're after? Are you rendering to texture/UV or rendering a scene image? If you're trying to get things rendered to textures/UV's then you should be using Render To Texture (shortcut 0)

In RTT, if you have Mental Ray set as your render engine, then in Render To Texture Mental Ray AO should be an output option, you won't need any shaders or light set ups it will render AO as a separate pass.

Most of the time I use mentalRay for AO only, and render diffuse and normal maps in scanline. There are times that mental ray just won't give me the results I want, so I have a few scenes with a few specific light set ups that I use to bake AO in scanline. MentalRay AO doesn't factor in the scene lighting, it runs its own calculations.

lloyd

Hey, thanks for all the replies.

r_fletch_r That passmanager plugin looks like the type of thing I'm use to using however if i can find out how to do it in the app then I'll go for that over a plugin. saying that tho, i will download that and have alook too!

@ sprunghunt Yeah that seems like a cool idea, i did look at the section inside processing and the material override seems like an easy way to do AO then untick it and be back at the diff pass. however if i want to do shadows or other pass related renders it wont be so good. however I'm only wanting it for AO so the material override might be what I'll be using for now. untill i need more options

@ Ark & Mark Dygert

Its not the RTT I'm looking for. this was to do with single and animation still images. Like i said in my first post. i did look at the 'Render Elements' bit but couldn't figure out how to change the options in the add... > 'mr A&D Raw: Ambient Occlusion'. also i couldn't see away to JUST render that image and not render a diff too. it seems like you have to render the diff for the render elements to then render :

So Mark Dygert how are you just rendering AO in mr? and not getting 2 images spat back at you

r_fletch_r

Max has no render layers system. Only render elements. You could try emulating them with scene states but i've heard nothing but bad things about scene states.

The A&D passes are specific to the Arch and design materials. so you control the AO with each materials own settings.
TBH i would just use A&D, its a great material.

You should give render elements a chance. while your need to generate the diffuse you get everything after that pretty much free. Also if you use the Arch and Design material you can get Raw un modulated passes. so rather than the weighting of say the reflection being present in the render it is given in a seperate image. Its exceptionally handy from compositing.

If I'm not mistaken Mark is talking about using mentalray AO for RTT.