Shade 10 Sneak Peek: MultiPass Rendering

Those in the know, know that Shade 10 English is really Shade 10.5 and includes updates that were in the Japanese Shade 10 and Shade 10.5 releases. One of the newest features in Shade 10 English is MultiPass Rendering.

MultiPass Rendering is a way to render images into discreet layers, with each layer containing specific elements. For example, here is a render that incoporated global illumination components.  The image below it captures only those elements associated with global illumination information.

That image looks kind of murky, doesn’t it? Well that’s okay.

So What is the Big Deal about MultiPass Rendering?

MultiPass Rendering doesn’t add anything new to your render, but it empowers you in so many ways to improve your renders. If you are a regular Adobe PhotoShop user, you already have some notion about what I am talking about.  When it comes to MultiPass Rendering, its more important about what the layer leaves out rather than what it includes.

With MultiPass Rendering, you can go back and do some powerful things through post processing. One simple reason might be that you want to do a post processing trick of taking only the background of a scene and turn it into black and white, while leaving the subject of your composition in full color. You can assign an object to a layer with an Object ID, before rendering. This will place the object itself into a separate layer – allowing you to select all layers other than the object layer, and transforming it into grayscale with in simple step in Photoshop.

MultiPass Rendering can work with visual elements as well as actual objects in a scene.  For example, having each discreet object rendered into its own layer (object), vs rendering all refraction information into a layer (parameter).

Do I Have to Use MultiPass Rendering?

Not at all – you can go ahead and render your image just like you are used to. The only downside of the old way is that, if you want to make a lot of changes to objects within your render, you’ll spend a lot more time in a product like PhotoShop.