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Sample workflow for multi-render passes
mental ray for Maya rendering
Set scene options
Exporting the multi-render passes for compositing
in Toxik
After
setting up your render layers and creating your render passes in
Maya, you may want to export your elements to be composited in Toxik.
- Select Render
> Export Pre-Compositing. The Export
Pre-Compositing window appears.
- The Export
Pre-compositing editor is divided into three tabs: Cameras, Render
Layers and Render Passes.
Select the appropriate tab depending on the elements that you want
to export.
- Use
the icon
to expand the render layer, render camera, or render pass hierarchy
and select the elements that you want to export. A icon
indicates that all elements are being exported and A icon
indicates that only partial elements are being exported.
- Enter
a scene anchor name in the Pre-Compositing Scene
Anchor field. Toxik uses the scene anchor name to identify
the elements that should be included in the composite. If a composite
with the specified anchor name does not exist, Toxik builds a new
one and adds to it all the elements with the same scene anchor.
Otherwise, if the composite already exists, it is updated and all
elements with the same scene anchor are included in the composite.
NoteUnlike the scene name, which can change,
for example, from version one to version two, the scene anchor does
not change. It uniquely connects a Maya scene to a scene composition
in a Toxik project. All elements that belong to the same composite,
for example, cameras, render passes, render layers, and so forth,
should have the same scene anchor. A scene anchor is only required
if you plan to updated your scene compositions in Toxik.
- Click
the Export All or Export
Selection button to export your render layers, passes
and cameras to Toxik. The Export PRECOMP file window
opens that allows you to enter a filename for your exported file.
NoteBefore exporting to Toxik, ensure that all
your scene elements are named correctly. Avoid renaming elements
(for example, a camera name or a render pass name) halfway through
your workflow. Toxik does not recognize the renaming of scene elements,
since renamed elements are flagged as new elements to be inserted
in the compositions. Therefore, if your composition contains old
and new elements, you are responsible for cleaning up your composition
after an update. For example, if you export for the first time with
camera1 and then change your camera name to camera2 and export again,
Toxik does not update the camera in the composite from camera1 to
camera2. Instead, your composite now contains two cameras: camera
1 and camera 2.
Using templates with the pre-compositing workflow
You can also create a template that instructs
Toxik on how to update the composite. A template is a Toxik precomp
file with nodes that contain anchor information. For example, if
you have 15 passes in your scene, but only 2 of the passes are blended
together in the template, then only these 2 passes are blended together
in your composite. Specify a template for each layer using the Render
Settings window, Passes tab.
When Toxik sees the template, it duplicates it, and then looks for
the elements with specific anchors (render layer/camera/render pass
anchors).
Create
and use a template with the pre-compositing workflow
- Create
a template by exporting your scene elements to Toxik. A composite is
created.
- Add
compositing operators, such as blend and comps or math compositing
nodes, to the composite and save it as a .txcomposition template
file.
- Use
a different template for each render layer. Select a render layer
and open the Render Settings window, Passes tab.
Enter the template in the Pre-Compositing template
for attribute. Repeat for each render layer.
- Select Render
> Export Pre-Compositing to export the scene elements
to Toxik.
File formats supported by Toxik
Refer to the following table for list of file
formats that Toxik supports, as well as their supported bit depths.
Format |
File Extnesion |
Supported bit depths for imported files |
Bitmap |
.bmp |
8 |
Cineon |
|
10 |
DPX |
.dpx |
8, 10, 16 |
HDR |
.hdr |
32 |
IFF |
.iff |
8, 16, 32 |
JPEG/JFIF |
.jpg, .jpeg |
8 |
OpenEXR |
|
16 bit float, 32 |
Photoshop |
.psd |
8, 16 |
PICT |
.pict |
8, 16 |
PNG |
.png |
8, 16 |
QuickTime |
.mov |
|
SGI |
.sgi |
8, 16 |
RGB |
.rgb |
8, 16 |
Targa |
.tga |
8, 16 |
TIFF |
.tif, .tiff |
8, 16, 32 |
Softimage |
.pic |
8 |
RLA |
.RLA |
8, 16 |
NoteBit depths 8, 10, and 16 are integer unless
otherwise indicated. Bit depth 32 is float.