If you want to render or edit only certain aspects or objects in your scene, the following steps provide an overview of how to create, modify, and output render passes:
To use render passes
1. Create a render pass. You can do any of the following:
• Choose a factory preset pass— see Creating Render Passes.
• Re-use your passes by creating your own pass preset or duplicating existing passes— see Creating Pass Presets and Duplicating a Pass.
• Create and name a new render pass— see Creating Custom Render Passes.
2. Create partitions. You can use partitions to organize and edit the objects and lights in your render passes. How you divide elements into partitions and the properties you set for these elements depends on the effect you want to achieve with the pass— see Defining Partitions and Setting Partition Properties.
3. Specify the active camera for the pass— see Controlling the Active Camera for the Render Pass.
4. Apply shaders to the pass and its partitions (to create special effects such as glows, environments, and volumics)—see Applying Shaders to Passes and Applying Shaders to Partitions.
5. If necessary, define an override for a partition. An override lets you control an object’s parameters using shaders without replacing any of an object’s material properties—see Applying Shaders Using Overrides and Overriding Properties [Interface and Tools].
6. Set the pass options from the Render Pass Property Editor [Properties Reference]. For an overview of how to set the pass options—see Pass Rendering Options.
7. Set up render channels and define their options. You can define render channels that allow you to output different information about the pass to separate files—see Render Channels & Framebuffers.
8. Set the renderer options for the pass. By default these are mental ray renderer options but you can also use the Softimage hardware renderer, or a integrated third-party renderer. Set the options as desired in the mental ray Render Options Property Editor or the Hardware Renderer Property Editor [Properties Reference]. For an overview of how to set the renderer options—see mental ray Renderer Options and Hardware Renderer Options.
The pass may be sharing the global renderer options defined for the scene or have its own local set of renderer options—see Setting Global or Local Render Options.
9. After you have set up render passes, you can render them—see Rendering Methods.
10. You can then composite and apply effects to the passes using Softimage Illusion — see Compositing and Effects.
Autodesk Softimage v.7.5