One of the driving ideas was to remove the publish modes and render
modes so that one would not depend on project preferences to render.
The typical problematic workflow we wanted to fix is:
. Alice creates a composition.
. Alice selects the custom "My Super Publish Mode" for her comp.
. Alice sends the composition to Bob who doesn't have this render mode in his project.
. Bob wants to render, but has no idea what render settings were intended.
Render Tab in Output Node UI
=========================================================================
To fix this, we moved as much render-related information as
possible from the project down to the compositions and their output
nodes to remove dependency on the project preferences. You can see this
in the output node's new Render tab.
To replace 2009's render modes, users can create presets on the output
nodes. Another advantage of this is that you get to see where the files
for a given output will end up. For example, the tooltip displayed when
overflying the "File Name" text field actually resolves the
substitution tokens.
Render Project Preferences
=========================================================================
What remain in the project preferences are the following two tabs:
1. Project Preferences: Render
Default values for output nodes, only used when creating new compositions.
In Maya Composite, when there is a possibility to enter
information both in the project preferences *and* in the composition's
UI (or in one of the node's UI), the UI in the composition always has
precedence and the UI in the project preferences is only a default for
new compositions.
2. Project Preferences: Render Actions
Mostly equivalent to the publish modes of Toxik 2009, but
compositions are not associated to render actions. You can see that the
"Publish Mode" popup is gone from the Composition tab in the main UI.
Instead, the render floating UI remembers the last render action on a
per-user basis.
Recognizing that the editing of render actions (previously known
as publish modes) was tedious, the command-line text field has become a
large scrollable text editor. Furthermore, recognizing how lost one can
become when injecting a typo in the render command - especially the
backburner one - we added a "Reset" fan-out in the right-click
operations of the list on the left. This way, one can reset to any of
the three system defaults (Foreground, Background, Backburner).
Launching Render
=========================================================================
Another driving factor in 2010's render workflow was to fix the
lack of feedback when starting a render. Hitting the "Publish" button
would perform 1 or 2 tasks (create version and possibly render) that
users eventually understood but was always non-intuitive at first.
Recognizing that rendering and creating a version only rarely
done at the same time, we've split them. Creating versions can now be
done with:
. Top menu: File -> New Version
. Hotkey: Alt-N
. Versions Tab: New
Render can be launched in a variety of ways. Each way will cause a predictable set of outputs to be enabled in the render UI:
. Right-click on a composition in the browser: enables the "renderable" outputs in the working version.
. Right-click on a version in the browser: enables the "renderable"
outputs in the selected version. This is done by ticking off the
"Collapsed Compositions" property in the browser, and navigating to a
composition's "[Versions]" directory.
. Right-click on one or more outputs in the schematic: enables the selected output(s) in the currently open version
. In the top menu: File -> Render: enables the selected output(s) of the currently open version.
. Hotkey: Alt-R: enables the selected output(s) in the currently open version (new in beta 3)
. Versions Tab: Render Selected: enables the selected output(s) in the version selected in the versions browser (new in beta 3)
. Versions Tab: Render Renderable: enables the renderable output(s) in
the version selected in the versions browser (new in beta 3)
. Versions Tab: Render All: enables all outputs in the version selected in the versions browser (new in beta 3) (new in beta 3)
Render UI
=========================================================================
The render UI enumerates the outputs present in the
composition's version, and lets the user chose the ones that will get
rendered, as well as the time range and the render action (foreground,
background, etc.).
Note that a "renderable" output means an output for which the
Renderable toggle is on in the main tab of the output node's UI. This
is just a way to control whether rendering will include or not this
output by default (always overridable from the floating render UI).
Output Description
Individual outputs have a description (range, image resolution, file
type, etc.), as well as the destination. The Edit button lets you visit
the associated output node's UI should you wish to make changes. Maya
Composite now remembers what tab was visible the last time a node was
selected, and returns to this tab when re-selecting the node.
Time Range
The time range in the render UI has a reset button, which will reset
the values to include the start and end of all currently selected
outputs. Note that many of these subtleties are documented in tooltips,
so please turn them on for exploring this.
Quick Access to Project Settings
We've added a quick-access to the definition of the render actions
from within the render UI. This pattern should show up more and more in
Maya Composite, as it's always been source of confusion: "where is the
UI that defines this?".
Feedback
Finally, you'll notice that the UI provides better feedback during render preparation: it tells you that it's preparing, instead of blocking as in Toxik 2009.
The foreground render provides better feedback (frame numbers) and the application's UI is no longer frozen between frames while rendering in foreground.
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Any help?
Posted by: Lants | 19/09/2009 at 01:40 AM