This page provides information on the Render Channels Container Node in V-Ray for Blender.
Overview
The Render Channels Container allows you to extract one or more render elements from the final image. The easiest way to create it is to press Shift + A anywhere in the node graph window and select Render Channels.
UI Path
||Node Editor|| > Add > Render Channels > Channels Container
Parameters
Fragment Method – Specifies how to determine the final values for render elements for which filtering is turned off (e.g. Z-depth, object ID etc):
Best coverage – For each pixel, the final values for the render element are taken from the object that has the largest contribution to that pixel.
Closest to camera – For each pixel, the final values for the render element are taken from the object that is closest to the camera.
Deep Merge Mode – Controls the generation of deep data for deep OpenEXR 2 and VRST files. Normally, with the default setting of By render ID, V-Ray merges the deep fragments that belong to a single object within a pixel in order to reduce the size of the deep data and also to allow for the perfect separation of the different objects if needed for post-processing purposes. However, especially in cases where you have one single object with a complex shape (i.e. one VRayMesh node that represents a large portion of the scene environment), this may be undesirable and so you can change this behavior if you set the Deep Merge Mode to By Z-depth. This causes V-Ray to separate the deep fragments based on the similarity of their z-depth values rather than which object they belong to. The Deep Merge Coeff parameter specifies how close the deep fragments need to be relative to the pixel size in order to get merged, which essentially allows you to control the precision vs size of the deep file.
By render ID – Deep fragments within a pixel are merged based on which objects they belong to (objects are differentiated based on their render ID as it appears in the render ID element);
By Z-depth – Deep fragments within a pixel are merged based on the similarity of their z-depth values. Use the Deep Merge Coeff parameter to control how close fragments need to be in order to merge them.
Deep Merge Coeff – When deep merge fragment mode is By Z-depth, this controls how close the fragments need to be in order to merge them. The value is relative to the pixel size. A value of 1.0 means that fragments that are within a block roughly the size of a pixel are merged together. Lower values produce more precise deep data, but can lead to larger files. Higher values make the deep data less precise but can make the resulting deep files much smaller. A value of 0.0 stores every single image sample separately and is not recommended.
+ Add - – These buttons allow you to add or remove input slots for the render channels to connect to.
Example: Connecting the Render Channels to the Container
