2008

When you render one or more elements, a normal complete rendering is also
generated. In fact, the element renderings are generated during the same
rendering pass, so rendering elements costs little extra render time.
Rendering to elements is available only when you do production rendering
with the default
scanline renderer on page 5949 or the mental ray renderer on
page 6039 .
NOTE The default scanline renderer supports a maximum of 32 render elements
per scene. The mental ray renderer does not limit the number of render elements.
If you're using a third-party renderer, check the product documentation for a
possible limit on the number of render elements.
NOTE When using the default scanline renderer, Antialiasing on page 5954 must
be on in order to render elements. With Antialiasing off, rendering elements is
disabled.
Element File Names
If you have previously assigned a file name and path for the (complete)
rendering on the Render Dialog's
Common Parameters rollout on page 5929 ,
the render elements feature uses this name and path as the basis for names
of the various elements. It appends an underscore (_) and then the name of
the element to the basic file name.
For example, if the render file name is "C:\render\image.jpg", when you add a
Specular render element, the default path and file name for the rendered
specular element is "C:\render\image_specular.jpg".
Similarly, when you enable output to a
Combustion workspace (CWS) file
on page 7121 , the file name you assigned is the default name of the CWS file.
For example, if the render file name is "C:\image.jpg", when you enable
Combustion output, the default path and file name is "C:\image.cws".
Example
Here is a rendering of a fountain, against a checkered background, and various
elements.
6148 | Chapter 18 Rendering