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The primary use of the passes tab is to create additional outputs for your render. These are also known as Arbitrary Output Variables (AOVs).
It is also possible to create additional "passes", which are more akin to Maya's render layers (which are also supported). Passes can each have their own camera and render settings, which act as overrides of global render settings.
This UI allows you to create Display Channels (AOV selections and LPE sources) and Display Drivers as their destination file (TIFF, OpenEXR, etc). By default, double clicking will add a new Display Channel and Driver from the left-hand menu to the right-hand menu. The left menu contains the preset AOVs and LPE typically used for rendering. These are separated into categories:
- Custom: Input your own custom AOV or LPE
- Standard: This contains most of the built-in AOVs.
- Diagnostic: This contains a subset of the AOVs used for visualizing pixel samples and CPU Time, for example
- Lighting: This is the most common set of LPE used for adjustment in compositing, outputs such as direct diffuse, indirect specular, etc. are found here
- Denoiser: These are the AOVs used by the Denoise utility, selecting the beauty Display Driver and enabling Denoise will denoise the Beauty after a Batch Render.
- Shadow: These are special LPE to collect shadows
- Mattes: These are Matte LPE used in conjunction with PxrMatteID
- Integrator: These are the AOVs that are built into the Integrator and may vary per integrator.
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The quick and easy explanation: Choose the Channels on the left you wish to render by double clicking them. This will auto-create a new display driver with the same name to be rendered. If you want a smaller list or maybe single file output with these channels, be sure and have a Display Driver selected on the right when you add the Channels using the arrow-to-list button on the bottom left of the Channels box. You must use a file format in the Display Driver that will hold these channels, we recommend leaving the default of OpenEXR nearly 100% of the time. If you do not know what file types you might need, leave it at default. |
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When you first open the AOV tab you are presented with the outputs for the default render pass.
Displays
The Displays tab shows the outputs for the selected pass. They are in the list on the right. The default output of the Final pass is, as you might expect, rgba, the color (Ci) and alpha (a) channels of a typical image. You can add other outputs by selecting from the list of presets in the list on the left and clicking the arrow button between the lists. Custom outputs can also be added by clicking the '+' button at the bottom of the lists.
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Choose the output file format of the Display Driver, including Deep Data (DeepEXR)
OpenEXR
OpenEXR is the most common, versatile, and capable file format for renders. It is the default and recommended file type. Denoise functionality requires OpenEXR or TIFF types.
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This is designed for rendering to 'it' as the display device, there are no options.
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DeepEXR
DeepEXR is the common format used to store deep data, or per-sample data used to composite objects at depth such as nesting objects in Volumes
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- ZIPS is default and recommended for compositing workflow as it is stored as a single scanline
- ZIP is also useful but slightly slower in compositing packages at bundles of 16 scanlines
- You can find out more about the less common choices on the Wiki page for OpenEXR
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PNG
PNGs are a common web format that include an Alpha channel for transparency
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This option attempts to compress the color scheme to shrink the file size
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Targa
Targas are a popular 8-bit (per channel) file format
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This option attempts to compress the color scheme to shrink the file size
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Texture
This renders to the RenderMan .tex format directly from the renderer.
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How much the data is compacted, for lossy schemes (such as DWAA) this may degrade final images
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Tiff
Tiffs are a popular formats that can also store floating point precision images as well as pass data
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The number of pixels per Resolution Unit (above) in the ImageWidth and ImageHeight direction.
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Denoise
Enable denoising for this chosen Display
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Remap
This is described in our Filtering documentation
- Break Point: A value below which the color is unchanged, must be non-negative (a)
- Max Value: The max value contained, at 0 all remapping is off. This cannot be less than the Break Point value. (b)
- Smoothness: A tweak to the second derivative at the breakpoint (the function is C(1) unless a==b , so you don't get to specify the first derivative. If this parameter is 1, the function is C(2). Smaller values make it flatter, larger ones make it less flat. If it is bigger than ~2.5, the curve has an inflection point - it curves up on the right of the breakpoint. It is illegal to set c <= 0, and it is not recommended to set it to anything other than 1. The default value is 0.
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You may need to close the render settings and/or add a new LPE if you added new light groups to lights while the UI was open, this will force it to repopulate the groups from your scene into the menu choices. |
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Filter
You can use this section to override the specified filter. For most color data the inherited filter is best to match the other AOVs, but for data, you may wish to use one of the listed min, max, zmin, zmax, etc filters to avoid filtering across object edges.
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This is described in our Filtering documentation
- Break Point: A value below which the color is unchanged, must be non-negative (a)
- Max Value: The max value contained, at 0 all remapping is off. This cannot be less than the Break Point value. (b)
- Smoothness: A tweak to the second derivative at the breakpoint (the function is C(1) unless a==b, so you don't get to specify the first derivative. If this parameter is 1, the function is C(2). Smaller values make it flatter, larger ones make it less flat. If it is bigger than ~2.5, the curve has an inflection point - it curves up on the right of the breakpoint. It is illegal to set c <= 0, and it is not recommended to set it to anything other than 1. The default value is 0.