3ds max vray + saving image like layers

[chow choppe]

Hi everyone

 

I am rendering some houses in which the client wants image in 3 formats

 

A ----complete, with house and landscaping and sky

B-----semi-complete, with house and landscaping NO sky

C-----with just house and foreground dirt area with somne plants no other landscaping no sky

 

She send some samples for it that they got done in the past.

 

actual Images they sent are in tiff format. what i am trying to find out that is there any way by which i can render them in one go like in layers from 3dsmax +vray so that i can turn off whatever i want and save as them as different tiff files from image A. i saw the alpha channels of these sample images. all these have same alpha channels and that alpha channel shows sky and background trees in black color and rest of the objects in white color. see below

 

 

 

 

so even the image C actually has same alpha channel so i think they just erased the trees and grass and driveway etc from it manually and alpha channel is not of much use in that tiff file .

 

so kindly help me out with this as i dont want to re render same image by turning off not required elements in the max file. any use of matte objects or multimatte materials in this. i am not Not very good in using these things so kindly explain it. appreciate it

 

Thanks

[perspectivo3d]

May be you can use a plugin for 3dsmax called "PSD Manager" .

You can try to google it for download an evaluation demo.

[Spooner04]

If you assign a mat ID of 1 to the sky, 2 to all the trees and 3 to the house.Render out a material ID pass and it will render out an image with several colors. You could then select by color in photoshop and delete the selection and then save out the variations.

[TheAllusionisst]

Material IDs are very handy and should be used, but what you are really looking for is 'Render Passes' such as what is available in XSI. You would set up what and how you wanted rendered per each pass and then just render them all at the same time. There is a plugin for Max, but I have no experience with it and could not say whether it is any good.

 

http://www.rpmanager.com/

 

As mentioned PSD Manager may be a good option as well and it is by Cebas and thus a well known company that has been around for a while. It may do all that you want and I believe it has a trial download.

 

http://www.cebas.com/products/products.php?UD=10-7888-33-788&PID=38

 

I also think Gonomonology just released a DVD on Passes for post production, I just saw it as I was going through email, did not read about it, so I don't really know what it's focus is.

[chow choppe]

If you assign a mat ID of 1 to the sky, 2 to all the trees and 3 to the house.Render out a material ID pass and it will render out an image with several colors. You could then select by color in photoshop and delete the selection and then save out the variations.

 

 

this is what i was referring to

but i am not very good with this

i have always found it very confusing to use

can u explain in more detail how its used with a simple example.

 

Thanks a lot

[Spooner04]

If you're not familiar with passes the easiest thing to do would be to make a copy of the file and just assign some materials with different diffuse colors to the various pieces and render it with scanline. this is an image from the gnomon dvd that allusionist mentioned. hopefully it will help explain a bit.

 

 

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/dvds/screengrabs/tjo03/tjo03g.html

[chow choppe]

thanks man

 

i will look into it.

but i wud still like to learn the material id thing.

i found this but its for MAYA. the last part is exactly what i am looking for "rendering objects in layers"

 

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/passes_layers/passes_layers.html

[Spooner04]

What we are starting to get into is called compositing. It is really a pretty in depth subject. A good place to start would be the dvd on gnomon workshop that allusionist and I have mentioned. It is written for max so that shouldn't be too tricky. the compositing software he uses is digital fusion, which I assume you don't have, so it will take some figuring out how to apply those principals to photoshop or whatever you will be using.

 

 

There is a book called digital lighting and rendering by jeremy birn that also has some information on compositing, but only a chapter or two though. The book in general is a good resource to have in general and I would recommend it. You could also get a copy of the art and science of digital compositing by ron brinkman. It is alot more in depth and reads more like a text book on compositing.

 

I think some dvd's on compositing would probably be your best bet to get you up to speed quickly for whatever this project is that you have. Then as you want to learn more in depth stuff look at ron brinkman's book and also for training on compositing software such as digital fusion, nuke, combustion and after effects.

[Spooner04]

Actually, now that I think about it. If you go to http://www.autodesk.com and go to communities/3d animation that will take you to the area forum. make an account and then check out this tutorial.

 

http://area.autodesk.com/index.php/tutorials/tutorial_index/rendering_essential_elements_for_compositing/

 

That will help get you started rendering out passes and such.

 

The attached pic is the button you use to assign the mat ID. The video tutorial I linked will show you how to render out a pass, along with some other things.

[TheAllusionisst]

I think we can reduce it to three levels and you have to decide whether using the functionality of your existing software is what you want to pursue (i.e. Material IDs) or if you want to pursue a plugin that allows you to render out in layers based on built in channels (i.e. diffuse, highlight, shadow, z-depth...), or the final and most powerful being render passes where you can do the layering and any other combination of having objects in the scene rendered to their own layer/channel... The later being perhaps overkill for a lot of applications, but say you want all the trees, people, cars..... rendered out seperately so that you could just tweak the building colors without making the people martians in the process, render passes save you from having to re-render a lot of times.

 

But Material IDs also stop you from having to re-render again as well, so you may be able to just use the software you already have. The different materials or objects (depending on what software you are using) can have a unique color assigned to them and then you can use select by color on that material ID image that is in your PhotoShop composite file and then make the rendered layer active and your selection is outlining the area you want adjust in photoshop. Basically it just gives you a way to select pretty acurately materials in the scene and adjust them only without messing up the rest of the image. I attached a couple images of this technique of something that was readily available.

 

I am sure others will explain it more eloquently

[chow choppe]

thanks everyone

i was able to do it material ids

i had to add 3 multimatte elemnts in order to have more number of objects in layers as with single multimatte i cud do masking for only 3 materials

 

thanks