Am I missing something here? If I change All Other Objects to invisible or holdout, nothing renders, no matter if I keep my Terrain layer visible, or vice versa.
I'm at work at the mo' so can't check it, but I think you might find you answer in my tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS21UjyQpWU
you need to set up a group node to get this to work
That's a good link from digitalguru. But here's a quick tutorial. 1 Go to Layers tab in the renderer 2 click the + and assign new render layer (make sure it is plugged in to the "render layer" node) 3 If you are looking for elements, go to that tab in the render layer node and choose the ones you want. 4 you also must render from the Sequence/Output tab. Hope that helps.
Thanks dorianvan, that's what I've been doing but the layer manager doesn't seem to recognise that I'm choosing to hide the terrain or whatever. Render elements render just fine.
Ifollowed the instructions in the tutorial video by digitalguru, including taking the terrain out of the terrain group, making a new group and selecting "capture nodes".
If anyone wants to have a look at my file, I've attached it for you. You'll probably get a missing map (for heighfield) so just ignore that. There's still a fractal terrain in there.
Thanks
Three things to check:
1) In the Sequence/Output tab of the render node you have to check the tick box next to "Extra output Images" and specify an output path.
2) In the "Extra output Images" save dialogue make sure that the file extension is .exr
3) This will only save out if you hit "Render sequence" NOT "Render image".
C:\Users\toby.lee\Documents\temp.IMAGETYPE.%04d.bmp wrong
C:\Users\toby.lee\Documents\temp.IMAGETYPE.%04d.exr correct
hope this helps
Thanks for the reply cyphyr.
I can render all the render elements out fine.. rgb/alpha etc. It's the render layers that are not working. If I create a new group including the terrain, then set it to invisible and all other objects to visible, then render, it still renders the terrain. If I set the terrain to visible, then set all other objects to invisible, it renders a blank image.
Sorry for misunderstanding.
At first glance this is a little odd.
However a question.
If you were successful in hiding the terrain what would you expect as the render layers output?
Or in other words what are you trying to achieve here?
Basically, I want to render the mountains in 3DS Max and the clouds etc in Terragen, then comp the two together using Nuke.
So, as the Wiki suggests, rendering the Terrain set to "holdout" will render all terrain black and render everything else correctly.
For each assigned group you can say whether the objects in that group may be visible, rendered as a "holdout", or hidden. Holdouts are visible in the image as black shapes with an alpha value of 0, and are often needed so that you can composite layers together in post. Holdouts are rendered in 3D space so that objects, clouds or atmosphere in front of the holdout object are still visible. Atmosphere and clouds can be rendered as volumetric holdouts, by attaching them to a planet that is a member of an object group in "holdout" mode.
Ok that makes sense.
However if you open up the exr's of the cloud layers and atmosphere layers you should see that they are ready to be comped together with a "mountain" layer weather it is rendered in Terragen or Max.
The holdout functionality and objects tab operate on objects. Terrain is a shader not an object, but is attached to the Planet, which is an object. So that's probably why the terrain still shows up.
It should be easy enough to get just the clouds though, if that's what you want. Just use the Cloud RGB and Cloud Alpha render elements.
- Oshyan