1.

Render Elements Ambient Occlusion Self shadowing / contact shadows Diffuse Flat render of all the colors in the scene. This Render includes only Colors and textures. (Beauty Pass) Lighting Direct and Indirect Lighting Reflection Reflection in the scene Self-Illumination Self illumined objects or textures in the scene Specular The Specular component of a rendering. Can additionally be used for blooming. Matte Black and white images used as masks. Zdepth Grayscale image representing the depth of a scene based on the z-axis. This can be used for depth of field and color saturation based on depth.

2. Setting Up Make sure all the texturing is complete and everything in the scene is at its final stage. Place the lights in the scene according to your personal preference. Be sure to turn shadows on or off as desired. For this tutorial I will be using a total of three lights. Two key lights and one fill light. Setup up camera to create a nice composition. Save the file with the name Main ex. Main.max This is done to stay organized and it leaves us with an untouched file that we can always go back to if we have any problems later on. 3. Rendering Passes Ambient Occlusion Save the file with the name AO Change the render to Mental Ray In an empty material slot make a Mental Ray Material Under the Basic Shaders section click on the button that says none. Then in the popup window choose the Ambient/Reflective Occlusion (base) In the samples slot you may need to change the number according to the value desired. I choose between 200 and 300. The Max distance may need to be adjusted depending on the scene as well. The Max distance is very important for indoor scenes. For this tutorial I used a max distance of 50.00 Apply this material to everything in the scene then render. Save this image with a file format that contains alpha channel information. For this tutorial I save all my files with the extension file type .tga Save scene Matte Zdepth Diffuse Open Main.max Save the file as Mat_Zd_Dif.max Open the Render Dialog and go to the Render Elements Tab Click the button Add and add the following elements Matte, Zdepth, Diffuse

In my tutorial I used the Matte element to separate the foreground objects from the background. Simply click on the element in the elements list and scroll down to the Matte Texture Element. Here you can choose by Material ID, Object ID, or Select by Object. Whichever you decide to use be sure to click the check box next to the option. Click on the Zdepth element and scroll down to adjust its settings. The Z Min number corresponds to the distance from the camera that will be in focus. The Z Max number corresponds to the end of your environment in relation to the camera. In this tutorial the statue is around 210 units from the camera. The back wall is 350 units from the camera. 210 is my Z Min and the Z Max is 350. I used the camera target distance to figure out these values. Click on the Diffuse element. After selecting the element scroll down to its settings and Uncheck the Lighting option. We do not want lighting to be baked into the diffuse texture. We only want solid flat colors in the diffuse render. Hit Render. Save all the images. For this tutorial I saved mine as Matte_1.tga, Zdepth.tga, Diffuse.tga Save the scene Mat_Zd_Dif.max Specular Reflection Lighting Open Main.max Save the file as Spec_Ref_Lite.max Open the render elements tab and add the elements Specular, Reflection and Lighting Hit Render. Save all the images with names that correspond to the rendered element. I saved my files as Specular.tga, Reflections.tga, and Lighting.tga For more control you can render out each individual light. Simply turn only one light on at a time and render specular, reflection, and lighting elements. Save those three images, then repeat the same process until all the lights have been rendered out. Shadows Open Main.max Save the file as shadows.max Under the render elements tab add the element Shadows. Hit Render Save the image. I saved mine as Shadows.tga Save Scene

4. Alternatives Hmatte Open Main.max Delete all the lights in the scene. In an empty material slot change the diffuse to pure red make the Self-Illumination 100 Do those same steps and create a pure green and blue material as well. Make sure there are no specular highlights. These materials allow us to make several alpha channels in one render based on red, blue and green. Use these materials to separate major objects. Such as a background or floor from a foreground object. Then hit render and save. For example for this render I saved the image as HMatte.tga Specular Reflection Lighting Open Main.max Similiar to the HMatte colors we are going to change the colors of our lights to Red, Green and Blue. In the render dialog under the tab Render Elements click the add button and add Lighting, Reflection and Specular. Hit render. Then save the renders corresponding to their render element. For example for these renders I used the names Lighting.tga Reflection.tga and Specular.tga Save the scene! 5.Compositing Order of elements when compositing This is the order they should appear In the compositing program. Zdepth being on the very top most layer of the composite all the way through to the Diffuse which is on the bottom (base) of the composite. Along with the order of each layer there is the corresponding layer blend mode listed as well. Zdepth = adjustment layer Specular = screen Reflection = Add Ambient Occlusion = Multiply Shadows = multiply Lighting = Screen or Multiply depending on scene Diffuse (Beauty Pass) = Normal