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Home: Autodesk Maya Online Help
Naming render layers
Work with render layers
Control visibility/reflection per layer
Recycling rendered images
to save time
If you have a Maya scene
with more than one render layer, you can recycle the rendered image
for the layers that are done. This saves rendering time by eliminating
the need to re-render layers that you can reuse.
You can use this feature
in one of the following scenarios:
- If, for example, you have five layers
in your scene, and 4 of them are fine but 1 layer still needs work.
In this case, you can
keep the render output for the four layers that are fine, and only
re-render the one layer that is in progress. This greatly reduces
rendering time as compared to re-rendering all five layers.
- All of your layers are fine, but you
need to re-order them in the composition.
- All of your layers are fine, but you
need to change the blend operator for one or more layers (e.g. changed
the mode of your shadow pass from Normal to Darken).
In the second and third
cases, you can keep the render output for all layers. A render that
only reorders layers and composites them is much faster in comparison
to re-rendering every layer in your scene again.
To recycle render output for one or more
layers
- Render a layer. Its recycle icon changes
from grey to red.
- Click the layer you want to keep. Click
the recycle icon to toggle
it from red to green. The last rendered output image for this layer
will be reused and this layer will not be re-rendered.
Repeat for all layers
whose render output you want to recycle.
Note
- The recycle icon is grey until the layer
has been rendered at least once. A green recycle icon saves the
rendered image and allows for faster re-compositing while a red
recycle icon will force re-rendering prior to compositing.
- Render output is only held in memory
for your current session of Maya. Any render output is lost after
you quit the current session of Maya.