After
setting up your render layers and creating your render passes in
Maya, you may want to export your elements to be composited in Composite.
- 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. Composite 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, Composite
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 Composite 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 Composite.
- Click the Export All or Export
Selection button to export your render layers, passes
and cameras to Composite. The Export PRECOMP file window opens
that allows you to enter a filename for your exported file.
NoteBefore exporting
to Composite, 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. Composite 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, Composite 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 Composite on how to update the composite.
A template is a Composite 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 Composite 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 Composite. 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 Composite.
File formats supported
by Composite
Refer to the following
table for list of file formats that Composite 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.
