You can also drag and drop a shader from either another partition or a browser to apply it to a partition.
Applying Shaders to Passes and Partitions
When you apply shaders to partitions, they override the shaders applied individually to objects in the scene (for that pass only). This means you can change the properties of objects in a particular pass without losing the properties of objects as defined for the whole scene. Once you have applied a shader to a partition, you can open its property editor and change values as necessary.
When shaders — such as, environment, volume, and output shaders — are applied to a pass, they are called global shaders. Applying a shader to a pass uses the Render Pass property editor, also called the shader stack. Since global shaders are attached to the pass, you can have different sets of global shaders per pass.
A render pass can be defined by a stack of environment, volume, output, and lens shaders. You can add more shaders, delete them, or edit them from the Render Pass property editor.
1. Open a pass’ property editor in any way, for example, using The Render Manager.
2. Display the Pass Shaders tab.
3. Use the corresponding buttons to modify the Environment, Volume, or Output shader stacks.
- Click Add to open a browser that displays a list of available shaders. Select a shader and click OK to add it to the global shader list.
- Select any shader from the list and click Inspect to display its property editor. You can now edit its properties.
- Select any shader from the list and click Delete to remove it.
4. To add lens shaders to the pass, first choose an option from the drop-down list under Lens:
- Use Only Camera Lens Shaders does not allow you to specify lens shaders for the pass. The pass uses the lens shaders applied to the camera, if any. In addition, the Lens Shader port does not appear in the render tree for the pass if this option is selected.
- Add After Camera Lens Shaders applies the lens shaders you define here after any lens shaders applied to the camera.
- Add Before Camera Lens Shaders applies the lens shaders you define here before any lens shaders applied to the camera.
- Overwrite Camera Lens Shaders applies the lens shaders you define here instead of any lens shaders applied to the camera. If you don’t add any shaders here, you can effectively remove any camera shaders for this pass.
Use the Add, Inspect, and Delete buttons as above to apply and modify lens shaders.
Pass Shader Example: Rendering with a Background Color
If you want to set a background color for a render, you can do so using the Background Color shader. This method, however, is done at the render pass level and not for the entire scene.
To render with a background
1. Choose Pass > Edit > Current Pass from the Render toolbar to open the Pass property editor for the current pass.
2. Click the Output tab to display the output shader stack. Click Add to open a browser from which you can select shaders.
3. Select the Background Color output shader (DSPresets/Shaders/Output) and click OK.
4. Once the shader is added to the shader stack, select it and click Inspect to open its property editor, where you can define the background color.
Applying Shaders to Partitions
Applying a shader to a partition is very similar to applying a shader to an object.
To apply a shader to a partition
1. In the explorer, expand a pass (click the + sign) to display its partitions.
2. Select the partition node to which you want to apply a shader.
3. Choose Get > Material > More from the Render toolbar.
4. In the browser that opens, select the desired shader and click OK to apply it to the partition.
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You can also drag and drop a shader from either another partition or a browser to apply it to a partition. |
5. Once the shader is applied, its property editor opens where you can edit its properties. For more information about applying shaders, see Shader Basics in the Material and Shader Basics guide.
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