RE: Render Channels

["Kim Aldis" <XSI(at)kim-aldis.co.uk>]

For me the power of channels is being able to split them out in the render tree, apply them to some objects not others. There’s a huge amount of untapped potential there. The lessening of the need to set up passes in itself is a real biggy.

 

From: owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM [mailto:owner-xsi(at)Softimage.COM] On Behalf Of Kris Rivel
Sent: 30 July 2007 03:54
To: XSI(at)Softimage.COM
Subject: Re: Render Channels

 

I love the render channels but I only use them for simple output of AO, mattes, specular, reflection, etc.  I often "think" I can use a channel for something and quickly realize that it involves too much tweaking and overrides so I need to make a separate pass.  Like Todd said, the refraction issue is a big problem sometimes.  For instance, the sprite node is only useful in the main channel.  It does not behave properly in a secondary channel.  The sad thing too is that when I have a nasty mix of passes and channels, I sometimes have to blow away a lot of my nice render tokens for my render paths so everything is organized upon rendering.

Kris

On 7/29/07, Sam Cuttriss <sam(at)janimation.com> wrote:

ive been enabling them, on the off chance that something relevant is rendered "free"
I have occasionally been able to use the a channel as a matte when comping, but more often than not i just get a laugh out  of them.

that said, im still just wrapping my head round their idiosyncrasies,
perhaps the penny will drop one day and i'll get something useful out of each channel.

my dream would be to render a 1 beauty pass,
and automatically spit out channels for all the passes i painstakingly set up now. (beauty materials might need a few extra hooks to output channels, preferably governed by some kind of override system)

Im not holding my breath though.

Sam Cuttriss
Janimation 3D Aficionado

Gene Crucean wrote:

I agree but only because of the current implementation. Is there any real reason that those things can't be implemented into a new render channel setup?

So lemme ask ya, do you use them as they are now? And if not... why?

Lemme add to my list something else that would be neat. Lets say they were implemented exactly like passes. Now what if you want to render just a reflection channel but you need to tweak it a little bit. Obviously it wouldn't be wise to re-render the entire thing just for your reflection channel. So... wouldn't it be cool if you could duplicate a render channel into a new pass while maintaining all needed settings?

On 7/29/07, todd akita < takita(at)earthlink.net> wrote:

Gene Crucean wrote:
> Who here uses Render Channels? I do... but I mainly use them for small
> things like a matte for an object, a singled out rendered object or
> quick AO pass for a single object. I see these as a HUGE time saver
> and really want to see it progress into a mature feature. Everyone
> rendering passes should be interested 110%. For those of you who use
> them, feel free to post your ideas on how to improve integration and
> workflow. For those of you who DON'T use them, why?
For me the big workflow killer is the transparency bug - refract rays
only display the output of the main framebuffer regardless of what
channel they are.

> Personally I see passes fading off into oblivion. Maybe a legacy
> feature thats nice to have if you just want to quickly render a matte
> pass or whatever. That way you don't have to render the whole wad.
I'm not sure, there're a lot of things you need control over that
framebuffers don't solve.  Arealights on/off, finalgather on/off, stuff
like that.  If your load times are killer or you have a lot of
preprocessing (displacement,finalgather,lightmap,shadowmap generation)
then it will probably save you time.

-T

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