Maya Complete Rendering In this article you will learn how to separate elements in your scene in order to render to different render layers which will allow you to composite into a final image.

STEP ONE Download the project files for your platform: NT - renderPasses.zip IRIX - renderPasses.tar.gz Set your project to renderPasses and open the lesson15.ma file from the scenes directory. As you no longer need to use the image plane that is in the scene you can delete the connection in the Hypershade. Open the Hypershade window, open the Cameras section in the left hand side. Select the image plane icon and press Backspace to delete it. Close the Hypershade. TIP: You can add the background image in Maya Fusion by using a Loader and animate the offset by using the Crop tool.

STEP TWO Select the drop down tab beside Display Layers and select Render Layers. Click Create New Render Layer icon. This will create a new layer. Name this layer NURBS_ship. Select the nurbship by it's selection handle and right-click over the Render Layer tab and select Assign Selected.

STEP THREE Create two more new layers and name them poly_ship and explosion. Assign the poly_ship and the explosion pointlight to their own render layers. Open the Outliner, and select the particle nodes associated with the poly_ship. Assign them to the poly_ship render layer.

STEP FOUR Open the Render Globals window. Scroll to the Render Layer/Pass Control section and open it. Click the Enable Render Layers box. This will add the Enable Render Layer Passes option. Click on the box to enable it. By choosing passes, you separate the color and shadow passes and in doing so you gain greater flexibility in the compositing stage as you can isolate each element in your scene. Set the options for the Render Layer/Pass Control as shown below.

Click to view larger image    STEP FIVE In the Render Globals window scroll to the top and set the File Name Prefix to shipLayers. Set the Frame/Animation Ext. to name.#.ext. Set your Start and End frames as shown. When rendering to layers it is important to have an Alpha channel for each image. Make sure Alpha channel is checked. Ensure that your camera is set to render from camera1. Check your Resolution and Anti-Aliasing settings.

STEP SIX Select Render > (Save) Batch Render... select a file name and click Save/Render. Maya should start rendering your sequence. If you open your Script Editor you will notice that there are four different files saved for each frame. Each file represents a Render Layer. When the render is complete, navigate to the images directory in your current project. You will notice that there is a directory called shipLayers. In this directory are subdirectories named after your render layers.

CONCLUSION You now have a series of images broken down into separate elements which you can now composite together. To the right is an example flow from Fusion that merges all your passes together. The advantages of separating your scene into layers are flexibility and speed. For example to change the color of one of your ships all you would need to do is re-render that particular layer in Maya instead of re-rendering the entire scene. This can potentially save you hours in rendering time. You also have the option to change color layers in the compositing stage rather than having to change them in Maya and having to re-render hundreds of frames.

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