3ds max 5 - rendering selective polys

[konvertore]

hi there,

i have a scene that scrolls sideways. and i have polys in the foreground and background, and there's 2-d character running between foreground and background elements, which i will composite later in after effects. the thing is, i want the character to run behind foreground elements. so how do i "hide" foreground poly elements and render them seperately? i tried using the "layers" options and "hiding" polys, but it doesn't seem to work... at least i have no clue how it works. how newbie of me, heh.

any help would be tremendously appreciated, thanks.

konvertore

[prithvi]

Select your foreground objects, then right-click and click on 'Hide Selection'.
Alternatively, you can right-click on your foreground objects and right-click on 'Properties'. Under the 'Rendering Control' area, uncheck the 'Renderable' option.

This way, you'll be able to render the scene with just the background elements.

Now, in order to render your foreground elements separately, unhide your foreground elements and now, hide your background elements (using the above method).
But now, while rendering, render your scene images using the .tga (Targa) format. This will render it with a transparent background, so only your foreground objects are rendered, with absolutely no background.

If you want to hide certain polys from your object, then give a separate ID to those polys and use a multi-subobject material for your object. Therein, reduce the opacity to 0 for the particular material ID corresponding to those polys.

Also, don't forget to check the 'Force 2-sided' option while rendering.


btw, what 2D software are you going to use?
If its Flash, then Flash supports .tga import, so no prob.

[konvertore]

thanks! that's really great information, i'm going to try it out.

i'm using after effects, which should handle the transparency fine.