Of course removing everything else from the scene would do it, but it can also be done by using visibility. The latter can be done by turning off visibility for everything you don't want appearing in the render (including all the individual nodes) under the Scene tab, or selecting the root node of the figure and turning visibility off under the Parameters tab. Visibility can also be adjusting using opacity under the Surfaces pane. If you have large or complex scenes, this may or may not represent a lot of work to isolate just one thing as you have described. An alternative would be to make sure your scene has been saved in its entirety, then highlight anything you do not want rendered under the Scene tab and remove it from the scene. Do not do any saves! Render your object or figure, then close the scene without saving when asked, and re-open your complete scene for further work.
For iray you can also use Canvasses, in the Advanced tab of Render Settings, to render only certain items. When you save the render you will get the usual composite plus a folder RenderName_Canvasses holding an .exr for each canvas you set up.
I found Iray will only render only one beauty pass at a time, whichever Canvas is at the top of the list (pls see attached). But you can render all the alphas at once. And they work beautifully.
Of course removing everything else from the scene would do it, but it can also be done by using visibility.
Thanks for the thought, but I would definitely NOT suggest this method for true masking. If you turn visibility off, the objects behind will be rendered - objects you never intended to see.
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Of course removing everything else from the scene would do it, but it can also be done by using visibility. The latter can be done by turning off visibility for everything you don't want appearing in the render (including all the individual nodes) under the Scene tab, or selecting the root node of the figure and turning visibility off under the Parameters tab. Visibility can also be adjusting using opacity under the Surfaces pane. If you have large or complex scenes, this may or may not represent a lot of work to isolate just one thing as you have described. An alternative would be to make sure your scene has been saved in its entirety, then highlight anything you do not want rendered under the Scene tab and remove it from the scene. Do not do any saves! Render your object or figure, then close the scene without saving when asked, and re-open your complete scene for further work.
For iray you can also use Canvasses, in the Advanced tab of Render Settings, to render only certain items. When you save the render you will get the usual composite plus a folder RenderName_Canvasses holding an .exr for each canvas you set up.
Thanks, Richard!! This is almost perfect.
I found Iray will only render only one beauty pass at a time, whichever Canvas is at the top of the list (pls see attached). But you can render all the alphas at once. And they work beautifully.
Thanks for your help. =]
Thanks for the thought, but I would definitely NOT suggest this method for true masking. If you turn visibility off, the objects behind will be rendered - objects you never intended to see.