Render Pass Basics

Overview

When you create a new render job, you have the option of either doing a normal render or multiple passes per frame. To add a render pass to a job, click the "Add" button on the Render Job Options window. Clicking this button makes the Render Pass Options window appear.

Save / Load

You can save and load render settings using the two blue buttons at the top of the window.

File Suffix

This is an identifier that is added to the rendered image's file. For instane, if the file suffix is "dif", the saved image will be filename.dif.001.tif. In any given job, you cannot have two passes with the same suffix, otherwise the images from one pass would overwrite the other.

Knockout Color

This color is used like a green screen for the following passes: Depth Mask, Hair Only, and Particles Only.

Presets

Clicking one of these buttons loads stored settings.

Partial Shader

You can specify a ShaderSpider partial shader to be applied to all materials in the scene for this render pass. See "Advanced Render Passes" for more on using partial shaders in render passes.

Pass Options

There are a number of different types of passes that GlowWorm can create.

Lighting

This kind of pass greys out all objects in the scene so that you only get the shading/lighting information. The light color and intensity is represented in this pass. You can have a lighting pass do a seperate pass for each light or one single pass, and also have shadows cast or not.

Diffuse Color

This pass displays the true diffuse color only for all objects in the scene.

Shadows Only

This pass does Poser 6's shadows only render. This pass may not yield the best results depending on the lighting in the scene. See Compositing Tips & Tricks for a better way to do shadows.

Ambient Occlusion

This pass darkens the area where objects crease or meet. You can use ambient occlusion to add extra definition to your renders. Raytracing will be turned on for any ambient occlusion pass. This is a time-consuming effect.

Depth Mask

This pass shows objects closest to the camera as the knockout color. As they go into the distance, objects become progressively lighter.

Hair Only

This pass shows only dynamic hair objects, everything else will be shown in the knockout color.

Particles Only

This pass shows only Particles 2 effects figures, which are not shown by default in any other passes. Everything else will be shown in the knockout color.

Select Attributes Only

This pass applies normal lighting and render conditions, but allows you to select exactly which material attributes you would like shown. Selecting on all attributes will do a normal render.

Diffuse, Specular, Ambient, Translucence, Reflection, Refraction, Alternate Diffuse, Alternate Specular

These checkboxes turn the respective material attribute on or off.

Shadows

This checkbox turns Cast Shadows on or off for the render.

Show hair, Show particles

These checkboxes turn dynamic hair or particle figures, respectively, on or off.