9

Render Elements Panel and Rollout 133
rendering pass, s o rendering elements costs little
extra render time.
Renderingtoelementsisavailableonlywhenyou
do production rendering with the default scanline
renderer (page 3–38) or the mental ray renderer
(page 3–78).
Note: The default scanli ne renderer supports a
maximum of 32 render elements per scene. The
mental ray renderer does not limit the number
of render elements. If you’re using a third-party
renderer , check the product documentation for a
possible limit on the number of render elements.
Note: When using the default scanline renderer,
Antialiasing (page 3–40) must be on in order to
render elements. With Antialiasing off, rendering
elements is disabled.
El ement File Names
Ifyouhavepreviouslyassignedafilenameand
path for the (complete) rendering on the Render
Dialog’s Common Parameters rollout (page 3–27),
the render elements feature uses this name and
path as the basis for names of the various elements.
It appends an underscore (_) and then the name of
theelementtothebasicfilename.
For example, if the render file name is
"C:\render\image.jpg", when you add a Specular
render element, the default path and file
name for the rendered specular element is
"C:\render\image_specular.jpg".
Similarly, when you enable output to a Combustion
workspace (CWS) file (page 3–611),thefilename
you assigned is the default name of the CWS file.
For example, if the render file name is
"C:\image.jpg", when you enable Combustion
output, the default path and file name is
"C:\image.cws".
Example
Here is a rendering of a fountain, against a
checkered background, and various elements.
On the right is the fully rendered fountain.
On the left, from top to bottom , are diffuse, specular, shadow,
and reflection elements.
Two more elements not directly related to the object s in the
scene, but imp ortant when compositing the image to other
sources:
on th e left is the background, on the right is the alpha channel.
On the left is an atmosphere element, in this example, a light
fog on the back side of the fountain.
On the right is the Z-depth. The fog uses the depth of the image
and objects to determine its densit y. The Z-depth element
contains these de pth values.