If you want to isolate and render particular aspects of your scene that are not defined by any of the preset passes—matte, shadows, highlights, or others—then you can create your own render passes. Your scene can contain as many render passes as you need.
After you have created a new render pass, you can define its objects and light partitions and apply shaders to the pass and its partitions. Keep in mind that you can also load a preset pass and customize it to fit your particular needs.
You can create a custom render pass in several ways. The following covers the many tools and views you can use to do this.
To create a custom pass
1. Do one of the following:
- Choose Pass > Edit > New Pass > Empty from the Render toolbar. This not only creates an empty new pass named “Pass,” it also creates empty background partitions. Each new pass is independent of the original Default_Pass.
For more information on this pass, see The Beauty Pass.
or
- Choose Pass > Edit > New Pass > Based on Layers from the Render toolbar. This creates a new pass and a partition for each layer you have defined in the Scene Layer Manager.
For more information about using layers, see Scene Layers in the Scene Elements guide.
The new pass is automatically the current pass now. Any further pass or partition commands are applied to this pass until you select or create another pass.
2. The pass has been created — now you have to fill it with objects.
Select the objects you want to include in your pass and click Pass > Partition > New. This places a copy of each selected object in a new partition.
- Objects that you do not want included in the pass’s effect should be placed in the Background Objects partition.
- Lights that you do not want to influence the pass’s effect should be placed in the Background Lights partition.
3. Once your passes and partitions are organized, you can begin applying properties to the passes and override properties to the partition elements.
For a complete description of these steps, see Setting Partition Properties and Applying Shaders Using Overrides of this guide, as well as Overriding Properties in the Scene Elements guide.
4. Set the render options for your pass. Render options can be controlled per pass — the changes you make are for the current pass only. See Pass Rendering Options.
5. To launch a render, click the Render button in the Render Options property editor.
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