Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
This is a simple but effective way to color grade your
images and animations. Want to warm up the shadows and
cool down the highlights? Soft Light blend a color-ramped
image that uses deep reds for the darker tones and cyan for
the brighter ones.
Render Layers and the Compositor
The Render Layers system allows you to group the objects
in your scene so that they are accessible as different inputs
in the compositor.
Figure 12.27
shows the chock-full-of-
fun Render Layers panel in the Render properties context.
At the top is the familiar control space for dealing with
multiple groups of settings, like materials, vertex groups,
and textures. In the figure, two Render Layers exist: “Sun”
and “Earth.” A different one is highlighted and visible in
each half of the illustration. Each of these Render Layers
will be available from a Render Layers node in the com-
positing workspace.
The
Name
control allows you to set the name of the cur-
rently selected Render Layer. Below that are two sets of layer
buttons. The ones labeled
Scene
are just a convenient repeat
of the layer buttons that you find on the 3D view header.
Messing with them here will change the visibility of objects
throughout your scene, so be careful. It's the layer buttons
labeled
Layer
that are important. These ones control which
scene
layers will be included in this
render
layer. In
Figure 12.27
, layers 1 and 2 are enabled for the entire
Scene, while only layer 1 is enabled for the “sun” Render Layer. Remember when I mentioned that the
terminology when it comes to layers can get confusing? Well, here we are.
Figure 12.27
The Render Layers panel.
This stuff can get a bit complicated, so instead of working with the main example scene, we're going to
simplify. Open the
monkey_orrery.blend
file from the Web Bucket for Chapter 3 (it's also included in this
chapter's Web Bucket). In the scene, which is where the Render Layers panels came from, we have the
sun, shining on layer 1, and the Earth chilling out on layer 6. If you hit Alt-A, you'll see that the sun
rotates over 90 frames, and the Earth-monkey revolves around it. Due to the camera angle, at one point
the Earth is completely obscured by the sun, and at another it passes directly in front of it.
Before we begin to fool with this in the compositor, hit F12 to do a basic render. When it's finished, you
see that your render window only shows the sun. Down on the Image Editor's header, you'll see a control
that you haven't dealt with before, to the right of the image's “Render Result” name. The control is a
pop-up menu that reads “Sun” and is shown in
Figure 12.28
. LMB clicking shows that both the “Sun”
and “Earth” layers are available as separate images within the render.
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