How to create Masks for Postwork?

Alien Alloy

Evening folks.

I've been trying to migrate from my good old Poser Pro to Daz Studio and I keep encountering those persky "how do I do that, in here" scenarios.

This time I'm trying to understand how, if it is possible to create mask for postwork: you know that nice flat white surface that then you can use for ... masking?

I've been testing out a Mask and Multipass Toolbox but it doesn't work with any iray texture and surfaces, it produce a mask allright but it's pretty much a gradient gray render of each model I select.

 

So the questions is pretty simple:
Given a full picture with multiple props and figure, is there a way to select only what you want to mask out and produce that nice black and white picture for later postwork use?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give me!

Richard Haseltine

The Canvasses feature of Iray offers some options - it's in the Advanced tab of the Render Settings pane.

Artbyphil

Yes I’d like an easy way to do this as well. I use surface mask creator but that only works for 3delight. I have been doing my iray render and then changing everything over to 3delight for the masks. bit of a pain.

I would love to see easy mask making built in to daz studio.

Alien Alloy

Richard Haseltine said:

The Canvasses feature of Iray offers some options - it's in the Advanced tab of the Render Settings pane.

Will this add like a sort of alpha mask to the final render or it is a whole new render to do?
Like a second pass, 2x the time?

Alien Alloy

Artbyphil said:

Yes I’d like an easy way to do this as well. I use surface mask creator but that only works for 3delight. I have been doing my iray render and then changing everything over to 3delight for the masks. bit of a pain.

I would love to see easy mask making built in to daz studio.

You and me both.

In poser you had the option to do that directly on a separate file with a very quick render to be honest.

 

The surface mask you mention, how does it works?
You just need to switch the render type to 3delight or all the surfaces too?

JonnyRay

Alien Alloy said:

Richard Haseltine said:

The Canvasses feature of Iray offers some options - it's in the Advanced tab of the Render Settings pane.

Will this add like a sort of alpha mask to the final render or it is a whole new render to do?
Like a second pass, 2x the time?

It creates multiple .exr files that can then be imported and used as layers during post processing. It happens during the render; so does not add any time to how long it takes to render. What you would want to do for your purpose is to create some "Node Lists" that include the objects you'd want to mask and create separate layers with just those items included in the Node List option.

@SickleYield created a video tutorial on the Iray Canvas System in Daz Studio it's an excellent primer on getting started with them.

Artbyphil

Alien Alloy said:

Artbyphil said:

Yes I’d like an easy way to do this as well. I use surface mask creator but that only works for 3delight. I have been doing my iray render and then changing everything over to 3delight for the masks. bit of a pain.

I would love to see easy mask making built in to daz studio.

You and me both.

In poser you had the option to do that directly on a separate file with a very quick render to be honest.

 

The surface mask you mention, how does it works?
You just need to switch the render type to 3delight or all the surfaces to

I use a script to change all the surfaces to 3delight and change over to the 3delight renderer.  i tend to  lock the camera i am rendering from and save out a second version of the scene in case i need to do more iray renders later so not to  mess it up. I then use serface mask creator to make my masks.

I got the  the simple script i use here. Seems to work well for what I need.  https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/139326/irayto3delight-conversion-script/p1