Help with Render Passes

[m89]

Hey guys we are some University students working on our major project in Houdini. We are currently trying to render off a colour pass and a depth pass. however when ever we try to do so it will also render out a beauty pass too. This is due to the fact that we are using extra image planes in the mantra node. Is there any way to render these passes using takes or setting something in the mantra node to override the beauty pass? Any suggestions would be great.

Thanks

m89

[sanostol]

hi, You can add the paramater "shop_disable_surface_shader" to the ROP to force mantra not to use any surfaceshaders. now you can render at least the depthshadow without overhead. to still render color (maybe with textures) and no beauty, I'm not sure how that should work

[m89]

hi, You can add the paramater "shop_disable_surface_shader" to the ROP to force mantra not to use any surfaceshaders. now you can render at least the depthshadow without overhead. to still render color (maybe with textures) and no beauty, I'm not sure how that should work

Hi,

thanks for getting back to us so quickly, could you clarify what you mean by "shop_disable_surface_shader", is it an actual node, or something you have to set using the parameter node? As we couldnt find it in the ROP level. Sorry if this is a really a stupid question, this is the first time we've used houdini for rendering.

Thanks

m89

[Macha]

shop_disable_surface_shader will not disable all surface shading but will remove color, reflection and such things (not displacement, there is a separate parameter for that). So, you end up with a minimal "beauty" shader.

I don't know how to completely remove it, except setting matte shading.

disable.hipnc

Edited April 17, 2011 by Macha

[sanostol]

but it's more accurate to keep the displacement for matte renderings? and with micropolyrendering and no fancy ligthsetups it is fast, too.

[m89]

Thanks for your help, we managed to do a colour pass using a take, and rendering off by using a constant shader with the texture applied, but we are still having difficulties with the depth pass. Still not too sure about how to do this

Thanks again

m89

[lukeiamyourfather]

Thanks for your help, we managed to do a colour pass using a take, and rendering off by using a constant shader with the texture applied, but we are still having difficulties with the depth pass. Still not too sure about how to do this

Thanks again

m89

See the attached scene and images. Note the extra image plane on the output tab of the Mantra ROP node. The shader is in the SHOP network, note the parameter node with the name of depth and export enabled.

depthChannel.hip

[Erik_JE]

shop_disable_surface_shader will not disable all surface shading but will remove color, reflection and such things (not displacement, there is a separate parameter for that). So, you end up with a minimal "beauty" shader.

I don't know how to completely remove it, except setting matte shading.

Just wanted to say how super handy this is for making ambient occlusion passes and I did not know about it until i stumbled upon this thread.