Spotmask for Autodesk 3ds Max

Spotmask

Spotmask is special precision render element for Autodesk 3dsMax MentalRay.Fast and easy to use plugin for MentalRay for rendering world position, normal, UV and motion vector passes.

What is Spotmask?

Spotmask is a plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max that renders additional precision render elements in mental ray:
- World Position Pass (scene location information)
- UVW Pass (texture mapping information)
- Normal Pass (surface normal data)
- Velocity Pass (velocity pass for motion blur post effects)

These advanced output passes allow 3d artists to make flexible adjustments to their images and animations during post processing and compositing.

Spotmask is a lightning fast and easy to use solution for the requirements of serious image and video composition workflows.

What are the Spotmask render elements?

World Position Pass:
The Spotmask world postition pass offers 3d artists the ability to better select and retouch any region of the image or animation sequence after it has been rendered.
Unlike Z depth buffering the world position data saves location data independently of the camera view: even if the camera moves or the object is out of camera view it still remains masked.This way an artist can modify color, blur, visibility or add any effect to selected areas of their rendered 3d world.
 

UVW Pass:
Did you ever want to change the textures in your scene after it has been rendered – without rendering it all again?UV-Pass is the perfect solution for this purpose: just add the Spotmask UVW-Pass render element to mental ray and it will deliver you the necessary mapping information. With this image information you can access and alter each texture of your image or animation.
 
Velocity Pass:
Motion blur is without a doubt one of the most time consuming components in animation rendering.
 

While 3ds Max already offers 2 options to generate velocity data by default, Spotmask’s version offers a significant improvement for camera motion. The default velocity render element doesn’t generate view-dependent data and completely ignores camera movement. It only works for scenes with a static camera. The G-Buffer velocity channel does consider camera movements and creates view dependent data but the camera motion is considered incorrectly and the blur moves into wrong directions.

Normal Pass:
This render element allows you to store the directions in which all surfaces are facing. This data can later be used to generate accurate reflections for light sources that were not there during the original render. Spotmask exports from mentalray world space, object space and camera space normal directions in raw and in clamped color space. 
 

Advantages of Spotmask?
Speed, flexibility and access to advanced image post processing abilities.We all have customers who would like to change color, blur or any other effects – after the animations have been finished. And each of us know how much time and ressources it costs to render everything again due to a minor change in the scene. Advanced post processing methods that are facilitated by Spotmask allow you to perform these tasks efficiently in your favorite composting software (Fusion, Nuke, etc) without repeated time consuming render jobs

Spotmask is ideally suited for:
Animation artists, technical directors and film studios and everyone who renders time consuming animations that are subject to continuous changes. Furthermore, the usage of a velocity pass in compositing can create an approximated motion blur replacement that often looks almost as good as rendered motion blur – but in a fraction of the required time.

Compatibility
Spotmask is intended for the usage with the 3ds Max mental ray renderer. It fully support network rendering and distributed rendering.Supported 3ds Max Versions: 3ds Max 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 (both 32 and 64 bit)* Please consider that the correct Spotmask velocity pass works only in Max 2014. The implementation of vector rendering in versions of 3ds Max prior to 2014 was anyway wrong and did not render vectors for static geometries.