The purpose of creating Spotmask is to provide 3D professionals with rendering channel elements for mental ray, which are very useful in the post processing and synthesis stages of their workflow. By default, mental ray provides many common rendering elements, but lacks some very useful data transfer or requires tedious solutions to create.

Spotmask fills this gap by providing easy-to-use rendering elements that generate data that has proven to be very valuable in the post-processing stage of rendered images.

Spotmask is a plugin for Autodesk 3ds Max that can render additional precise rendering elements in mental ray:

• World Position Pass (scene position information)
• UVW Pass (texture map information)
• Normal Pass (surface normal data)
• Velocity Pass (velocity transfer of motion blur post effects)
• Curvature Pass
• Depth Channel (Depth Shader)

These advanced output channels allow 3D artists to flexibly adjust their images and animations during post-processing and synthesis.

Spotmask is a fast and easy-to-use solution that meets the requirements of strict image and video synthesis workflows.

What are Spotmask rendering elements?

World Location Pass:

The Spotmask world position channel enables 3D artists to better select and decorate any area of an image or animation sequence after rendering.

Unlike Z depth, world position data is saved independently of the camera view: even if the camera is moved or the object is not in the camera view, it remains masked.

In this way, artists can modify colors, blur, and visibility, or add any effects to the selected areas of their rendered 3D environment.

UVW - Pass:

Have you ever thought about changing the texture in the scene after rendering - instead of rendering it again?

UVW-Pass is your perfect solution: simply add Spotmask UVW-Pass rendering elements to mental ray, and it will provide you with the necessary mapping information. Using this image information, you can access and change each texture of an image or animation.

Speed Pass:

Undoubtedly, motion blur is one of the most time-consuming components in animation rendering.

Although 3ds Max already provides two options by default to generate speed data, the version of Spotmask provides significant improvements for camera motion. The default speed rendering element does not generate view-related data and completely ignores camera movement. It is only applicable to scenes with static cameras. The G-Buffer speed channel did indeed consider camera motion and create view-related data, but camera motion was mistakenly considered and blurred to move in the wrong direction.

Ordinary Pass:

This rendering element allows you to store the orientation of all surface faces. This data can later be used to generate accurate reflections for light sources that did not exist during the original rendering. Spotmask exports normal directions from mental ray world space, object space, and camera space in the original color space and clamp color space.

Curvature Pass:

Spotmask implements a highly precise and customizable curvature rendering channel. The Curvature rendering element determines the strength of the object's surface bending at any given location. It also distinguishes between convex and concave corners.

This information can be used to detect and modify grooves and ridges on objects during post-processing. For example, artists can control two different topological attributes in the final image: the geometric regions of "bulge" (bulge) or "insert" (concave). It can enrich your final synthesis with beautiful AO fake appearances or additional color details in wrinkled mesh sections.

Thickness through:

This rendering element determines the volume thickness of the object on its surface.

This information can later be used to add modifications such as transparency or shading to objects that consider their volume rather than uniformity.

What are the advantages of Spotmask?

Speed, flexibility, and access to advanced image post-processing capabilities.

We all have customers who want to change colors, blur, or any other effects after the animation is completed. Each of us knows how much time and resources it takes to re render all the content due to small changes in the scene. The advanced post-processing methods promoted by Spotmask allow you to efficiently perform these tasks in your favorite composting software (Fusion, Nuke, etc.) without the need for repetitive and time-consuming rendering work.

Spotmask is perfect for:

Animation artists, technical directors, film studios, and all those who render time-consuming and constantly changing animations. In addition, using velocity channels in synthesis can create approximate motion blur replacements, which typically look almost as good as rendered motion blur - a small fraction of the time required.

compatibility

Spotmask was created for the 3ds Max mental ray renderer. Fully supports network rendering and distributed rendering.

Supported versions of 3ds Max: 3ds Max 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 (32-bit and 64 bit)

*Please note that the correct Spotmask speed transfer is applicable to the Max 20 version. The implementation of vector rendering in versions of 3ds Max before 2014 was incorrect and did not render vectors for static geometry.