Introduction to multi-render passes: a simple workflow example

In this scene there is a render layer, named KitchenSink, which includes a sink and a spotlight. The sink has a Phong shader applied to it and the spotlight’s Use Ray Trace Shadows attribute is enabled. Use the following simple workflow to obtain a diffuse, reflection, shadow and specular pass for this layer.

Note

The multi-render pass feature is supported for the mental ray renderer. The rendering API allows other 3rd party renderers and custom renderers to support it moving forward.

Create render passes for the render layer

With the KitchenSink layer selected, open the Render Settings window and select mental ray as your renderer.
Select the Passes tab and click the Create new render pass button to create a new render pass. The Create Render Passes window appears.
Select the following render passes. You can multi-select items: Diffuse Without Shadows, Reflection, Shadow, and Specular Without Shadows. Click the Create and Close button. Four render passes named diffuseNoShadow, reflection, shadow, specularNoShadow are created and appear under the Scene Passes section
Note
By default, a beauty pass is also created for the each layer once the selected passes have been created.
Use the button to move the passes to the Associated Passes section. This makes the passes available to the current layer.
Render the scene. By default, if you render from the scene view, your rendered images are saved to the subdirectory <RenderLayer>\<camera>\<RenderPass> under the images\tmp directory of your project file. Maya also creates a MasterBeauty folder where it saves the default beauty pass for the scene. The image file name <scene>.iff is used for each rendered image. If you batch render, the rendered images are saved directly to the images directory.
Note
If you render using the Render View window, you can also preview your render pass output by selecting File > Load Render Pass.

Beyond this example

In addition to creating render passes for the entire render layer, you can also create render passes for a subset of the objects and lights in your render layer. You can do this by creating a render pass contribution map. See Creating render pass contribution maps for more information.

You can also customize the subfolders and filenames to which the rendered images are stored. See Creating subfolders and filenames for rendered images for more information.

If you have many render passes in your scene, you can group them into render pass sets, for example, an Illumination pass set that includes all passes involving lights, such as diffuse, and ambient. See Using render pass sets in your scene for more information.