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Canvases fully rendering what is underneath another object?

SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,799
in The Commons

I really doubt this is possible, but you'll never know unless you ask.  :)  I'm not even sure how to accurately describe it to be honest, but here goes. Is it possible to use canvases to fully render a background or object that is behind another one without the foreground object being in the way, as if you rendered the scene twice with the foreground object hidden? I'm doing an animation test, and I would like a background character's animation to be rendered separately and fully visible, but still retain the lighting and shadows cast by a foreground object. Assuming this can't be done in Studio, are there any practical ways to do this other than rendering twice with the foreground object hidden and then manually try to add the lighting and shadows to the background character?

Thanks for any information.

Comments

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,889

    I don't think so, certainly rendering two Beauty canvasses with different node lists doesn't make the items in the one list that are bhind the items in the othe show where they are masked.

  • Matt_CastleMatt_Castle Posts: 3,051
    edited January 4

    SnowSultan said:

    Is it possible to use canvases to fully render a background or object that is behind another one without the foreground object being in the way, as if you rendered the scene twice with the foreground object hidden?

    You can't do this in a single pass with Canvases.

    However, under most circumstances, the "Iray Visible to Primary Rays" parameter that can be added by the "Create Advanced Iray Node Properties" script would make it possible to do in two passes while retaining the correct lighting. Setting this parameter to Off tells Iray to ignore the object for path collisions until the ray coming out of the camera has intersected with another (valid) object. It was originally added to help hide light sources after the change to Ghost lights, but it is possible to use it to allow you to put a camera behind objects/walls in a way that the camera can see through them, but still having them there for lighting/shadows/reflections.

    (A problem that can occur however is that because interacting with any other object causes the ray to no longer be a primary ray, you can't use this as a tool if what you want to hide is, for example, behind a window or in a reflection, etc, because then what you're seeing is not actually the object itself, but its influence on the lighting of another object).

    Post edited by Matt_Castle on
  • SnowSultanSnowSultan Posts: 3,799

    Thank you for the answers so far. Matt, can you tell me where that script is located? Is it a download somewhere or is it included in Studio? Thanks very much.

  • Matt_CastleMatt_Castle Posts: 3,051

    It's included in Studio, although I'm not certain exactly what package it's in.

    *Probably* either the main program install or the Default Resources. I always just search for "Advanced" in Smart Content when I need it.

    (Once you've used the script to add the Primary Rays visibility parameter to all the objects you need, you then need to set those parameters to "Off".)

  • Richard HaseltineRichard Haseltine Posts: 108,889

    Matt_Castle said:

    It's included in Studio, although I'm not certain exactly what package it's in.

    *Probably* either the main program install or the Default Resources. I always just search for "Advanced" in Smart Content when I need it.

    (Once you've used the script to add the Primary Rays visibility parameter to all the objects you need, you then need to set those parameters to "Off".)

    In the content tree on disc it's in Scripts>Utilities

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