Good evening everyone!

i have rescently upgraded to max 2009.

I was trying to generate Z-depth pass from max 2009, and found that the option “render final image” disapeared.
meaning that even if i just wanted a single pass, i had to render a full image, then the pass will be generated.
which was bizzar, then i loaded up my max 2008 to find that it wasn’t there too.

Basically, i wanted to know a way i can generate a pass without having to render the full image.

Thanks for your help in advance : )

Hi,

The only way I know of generating a Z-depth pass is in the render elements tab of mental ray. Another (and maybe faster) way of doing it, is rendering with the scanline renderer and assigning a falloff self illumination component based on the distance to the camera for every object in the scene. Check the image attached with the two options.

Cheers.

Q6600 @ 3.55Mhz / ATI 4850 1G DX9/ 8G RAM / 4 500G HD in RAID5 mode

Damn I’m good!

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Thank you for the promp reply : )

I am aware of “render passes” from MR. however, my question was.

“how to generate render passes / render elements without having to render the full image in MR”

previous to max2008, there was a toggle under “preference” tab, which goes “render final image”.
enable it, MR will render the full image first, then generate passes/elements,
disable it, MR will just generate passes, which is very convinient.

However, from MAX2008-2009, that toggle has disapeared, so everytime i just want to generate a pass/element, MR will always render the full beauty pass image, then generate the passes, which is of a big time waste.

Again thanks for the answer : ) but hope i have clarified my question a bit : )

anyone else can shine a light on this topic?

Uhmmm, I think it’s not possible to do that. Another alternative can be do Z-depth passes with a simple and fast to render white material as a material override. Sure is not what you want, but that’s as close I can get.

Cheers.

Q6600 @ 3.55Mhz / ATI 4850 1G DX9/ 8G RAM / 4 500G HD in RAID5 mode

Damn I’m good!

Thank you for your replies dynamis : )

but thats the thing, even till max9 (not 2009 but just 9), there was the option of turning off “render final image”
which enabled me to just render out required passes, without having to render the main scene.

as said, which is gone in max 2008 and 2009. odd, as it was perfectly working option, so i was assuming it was just moved or something.

well i will dig into it bit more, i found it funny as rendering passes/elements are quite standard workflow nowdays, but nobody else is finding it weird..

Hi everyone, just to clarify the question even further, i have attached two screen shots.

one is taken from max 9, one from max 2009, in render setting/process

in max 9, there is a “render final image” toggle, in max 2009, its gone.

anybody know where it went? or how i can render render passes / elements without rendering final image?

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It disappeared in 2008 so it’s not (specifically) a 2009 issue. I vaguely recall it being discussed when 2008 was released - careful searching of the forums may find the thread for you.

Max 4.2 through 2013.
XP-64 (SP2)
NVidia 9800GTX-512 (Driver 266.58).
Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX9.0c.

Wow, that is an unfortunate decision.

Maneswar Cheemalapati [FA]

oh so i am not going crazy after all…
was looking for it for few hours, when i had an impending deadline…

I do not understand why they removed it, it was working fine, and removing it is like going backwards. 
specially problem is.. that i do couple of high resolution renders, using Master Zap’s split render extensively.

so beauty pass from split render, then generate passes as single render, and i found out that they do not match perfectly ( i actually started a nother thread regarding that matter).

long story short, so its not moved to somewhere else, but removed for good?, any workaround?

Yeah, this blows… I can’t find it anywhere either, and have now run into a bug where I cannot render elements (specifically z-depth) without killing shadows in my “normal” render pass.  So, the only solution I see for my current project is to render the scene twice, once with elements turned “off” for the main pass, then with elements on, (but not saving the main pass file) for the z-depth pass.  Extremely inefficient, as it has to render the main image twice regardless.  Ugh.

I know what you mean brittnell.

like specially, reason you would consider using pass is for high end renders, where re-render times are just too long to get things right..
so having to render the main passes (specially having to keep the high sampling rates to get the sampling high in passes)…
its rediculous really.. don’t understand why when it was working fine before..

really do hope its some kind of a clitche, that will be fixed soon with some patches hopefully.. however, the fact that it was omited at max 2008 and again at max 2009..
things are looking grim..

hope someone who knows more why it was omitted, or any other work around.. can shine some light on the subject would be great : )