Phoenix Render Elements?

[Laserschwert]

I am looking for a way to render a few render elements for my Phoenix explosion, especially a VRayNormals pass as well as a Multimatte to have separate masks for fire and smoke. Is this possible at all?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Yup, you just need to switch to Volumetric Geometry mode for render elements.

Cheers!

[Laserschwert]

Oh I see, thanks, that works for the normals. But how would I render out masks for smoke and fire? Basically a multimatte with R = smoke, G = fire.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ah, fire and smoke cannot be separated that easily. You could extract just the fire using the VRaySelfIllumination element, but it's not a mask per se...

[Laserschwert]

Ah well, I think that can work... substracting that from the alpha channel should leave me with an approximation of a smoke mask.

[TomGore]

Hey, I've checked docs for any info on render elements in Phoenix. There is none. Is there anything like Fume Fx volumetric element? How to save an alpha channel of smoke only? Velocity? It can be Scanline, or vray, or any renderer - but is there a possibility of having just a smoke and fire on a single separate tiff (with alpha, for example) ready for compositing in after effects or nuke?

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Ummmm, here you go:
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...ing-RenderMode
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/...Fire+and+Smoke

Most importantly, switch to Volumetric Geometry for the Simulator or "Render as Geometry" for the Particle Shader.

Cheers!

[TomGore]

Okay, thank you very much - I expected a separate page for render elements only, but It seems working after Volumetric Geo on. The only thing I can't get is Phx FireSmokeSim as matte object. Perhaps it is a demo limit? I set up vray's properities "matte" object setting and smoke doesn't disappear from beauty render (while casting shadows and GI) as standard objects do. How would you set up render elements to get a beauty renders without smoke on them (f.e. new york city and towers with smoke matted but still influencing the scene) - and then, separately, only smoke with alpha (but still affected by invisible geometry and lights)? If I get to know how it is done in vray, I will try similar method with octane or other gpu renderers.

[Svetlin.Nikolov]

Hey, matte is not implemented yet - only multimatte works with V-Ray in Geometry mode right now. For the smoke, would a V-Ray diffuse filter render element work?