Render pass confusion

[astroAJ]

Hey guys

As some of you may know I'm working on my project spaceship project.
http://forums.3dtotal.com/showthread...=106128&page=7

The problem I having is that I want to render out the landing pad as a still image so that I can paint over it, and I want to keep the spaceship as an animation.

How do I make sure that the spaceship still receives and casts shadows and reflections etc without having to render out the landing pad to???

[rocneasta]

just set an object NOT visible to camera, leaving every other parameter - hence you will get receive and cast shadows etc. but not visible to camera, meaning the render will not render the object, but only the effects it produces

[rocneasta]

you can always exclude some objects from the effect of light (light parameters) and can render out shadow pass, but i reckon the first thing i answered would be the best.

[astroAJ]

I forgot to mention I was using Maya lol.
I'm using the "primary visibility" which is the same as visible to camera it picks up the refection’s and shadows from the landing pad but the spaceship doesn’t cast shadows and reflections any on the floor. How can I achieve that??

[rocneasta]

Originally Posted by astroAJ

I forgot to mention I was using Maya lol.
I'm using the "primary visibility" which is the same as visible to camera it picks up the refection’s and shadows from the landing pad but the spaceship doesn’t cast shadows and reflections any on the floor. How can I achieve that??

not played with maya yet, but in max there is "renderable" and "visible to camera" - not the same, cause renderable won't render the model nor it's lighting effects, while visible to camera, ignores only looking at the object.

[rocneasta]

Looking at your final WIP image, you can always render your entire image with the spaceship and just delete him via Alpha channel acting as a mask that you have to adjust to have the ship in it as well.

Basically the spaceship is not covering any part of your landing pad, except the tiny bit of the light that you can ignore so far - you will be doing post on it.

After deleting it, you will have the wanted shadows and lighting effects on the pad without the spaceship