Rendering Animation Techniques

[jondicks]

hi there, I am currently working on a project which has a lot of object, and therefore faces, I am using advanced lighting, which of course increases the rendering times massively - but still, it needs to be good

the project is a camera flyby of a lake, including trees and buildings, quite a simple animation with no moving objects, just the camera flyby.

I was wondering, are there any suggestions or techniques which can be used to make the general rendering quicker for example:

can I render a number of different movies, each movie being a different selection of objects i.e movie 1 = the trees, movie 2 = the buildings, movie 3 = other objects.

with these movies, can I import them into premiere or aftereffects and then comp them together to create one final overall movie.

a bit like in the "REAL" movies using bluescreens to super impose elements onto a movie?!!??!!?!??!?!??

help if you can!!!!

my system is:

3ds max 7
P4 3.ghz HT
1.5gb ram
win2k

premiere 6.5
aftereffects 5.5

[Brodix]

Well I am a Maya user, but cant you just render them out in layers, as opposed to different scenes?

[Puckducker]

Yes, you can render out in layers.....just make sure to include the alpha channel, in your renders.

Anytime you render something, anything in the render that isn't an object (ie: the black backgound) will automatically become part of the alpha mask the computer makes during the render (it's the black and white cut-out image you can select after the render is finished)....this mask is essentially the same thing as the blue screen (chroma-key) in films, only the computer automatically does it for you. It will be automaticlly saved in the file for you, unless you turn it off otherwise.

So if you want to do your fly by in layers, when you want to render your tree's, make sure EVERYTHING else is not renderable....that way the black background area behind the tries will automatically be cut out when you comp that tree layer on top of the other layers.

So that's it, to render in layers, just make sure everything else is invisable....

Just remeber, that if you render in layers, you're also going to have to render your shadows as a seperate pass, since they won't be there if you do the trees and the ground in a seperate layer. I can't remember how to do it in MAX, but there will be an option where you only can chose to only render out the shadows. So that'll be another layer.