Re-evaluation Time
Jun 8th, 2010 by Jared
A recent discussion on CGTalk has made me take a second look at how I render my scenes. For the past couple years or so I’ve preferred to render out multiple passes/buffers, and combine them in post. First it was with ctrl_Buffers, and lately it’s been p_MegaTK. Now I’mwondering if it’d be better to just do everything in-camera.
I guess you could say this started when Final Gather and MegaTK caused Maya to crash. I’ve also been a little frustrated with MegaTK’s limited light support. Through its own light shaders, MegaTK’s buffer output supports Direct, Point, and Spot lights. Image-based lighting and mia_physicalSky can be used for ambient/indirect light, bit not as a primary light source.
Another possible reason for my reliance on passes, could be that until recently I’d been using the wrong settings for subsurface scattering, and also because I didn’t know about MR’s linear workflow. While I’m at it, I’m tempted to give V-ray a look as well. Just as soon as a demo is made available for Maya 2011 (and hopefully before my 2011 demo expires)…