Maya's New Render Setup - Shadow Layers, Beauty Layers, Layer Overrides

An in depth walkthrough of the new render setup in Maya and how to create simple overrides for different render layer, how to separate shadow and beauty layers with different AOVs along with a quick look at how to put the layers and passes together in Aftereffects.

[@waleedthanvi2907]

Amazing. First time I could have understood the pipeline of that confusing and complicated Render Setup. The way you made and presented the tutorial is itself a tutorial for me about how to teach a novice like me. Hats off to you. Love you.

[@ihabiano]

Layers start 9:48 Shadow creation 21:50 Layers Override 26:10 Shadow Overrides 39:32 After Effects Process 58:34

[@TheZodiacGamer]

real MVP right here^

[@DIAKOURSHEET]

41:15 Was it fkn hard for you to say which shader for MR? HOw fkn hard was that?

[@archiethejanitor6779]

thanx dude. the guy got good tutorial but he's too lazy to edit his vid

[@ihabiano]

@@archiethejanitor6779 no too lazy, I'd sat too busy.. coz he is.

[@ghklfghjfghjcvbnc]

@@DIAKOURSHEET hey dipsh!t... how about you stop crying like a BABY and use some common sense and figure out what he was doing. I watched his tutorial tons of times to really understand the mechanics of what was going on. So ungrateful. LOSER.

[@MANIAKRA]

I can't believe this is free. Incredible walkthrough, clear, concise, informative. Thank you so much, one of the best CG tutorials I've seen - paid or otherwise.

[@MANIAKRA]

Maybe I missed it, but if you are exporting the "Background" "shadow catcher" for all 3 FG, MG, BG, how do you prevent that shadow from stacking up 3 times in post production? My shadow layers have SOME noise in the far background and it's not completely transparent. So when comping 3 layers of BG shadow passes, it's darker than should be.

[@meghdad61]

@@MANIAKRA The BG shadow catcher, catches only the shadows for either BG, FG or MG. So shadows that are casted by FG objects, won't exist in the BG layer, and thus they won't add up.

[@DDCollector]

I haven't used Maya since college since other companies I worked for wanted me to use 3DS Max. Now I'm back at it (in 2019) and this new render layers feature had me totally stumped. What a coincidence that my thesis professor has the best tutorial on the subject. I hope SCAD is treating you well Meghdad.

[@meghdad61]

Hey Soup! It's very nice to hear from you. Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad the video helped you out. Be in touch please

[@falfieri3167]

I avoided the render new render layers for the longest time because I always thought it looked so complicated but only 10 minutes in and I realize its actually very simple and much more efficient than the legacy render layers. Cant wait to try them out!

[@nikoulph]

The most concise clear and understandable tutorial on this gimmick render setup of mtoa thank you! PS: Most of other tutorials have people switching subject every 2 seconds, confusing non linear tutorials. This one will really get you to speed

[@biotom.]

I'm working in Maya since it was Power Animator. But new "effective managers" are making my life insane with every new maya version. hey, we removed all render engines, but made a new overcomplicated render layers, and yes, old menu and your old scenes are fckd until you fix legacy render menu manually. And by the way, enjoy identical monochrome squares for ALL icons. That's easy, open the Preferences window, navigate to the Rendering category, then select Legacy Render Layers as the Preferred Render Setup system and restart Maya. The Legacy Render Layers system and the new Render Setup system are different and separate and cannot be used together. You can only use one or the other. Do you like it, right? And we are happy to introduce funny game with every new version of Maya, it's called "look friend, find how many menus we renamed and rearranged randomly without any logic, just to make sure you will be busy finding right menus and didn't notice nothing actually changed in new version."

[@RainbowNepal]

This is the best video i have seen about render layer creating ...when ever i forget i just search in youtube and search for this video. i am really happy you have helped me a lot by this video. thank you.

[@MNK_Games]

JUST AMAZING HOW CALMLY YOU EXPLAINED IT>>>> UNDERSTOOD OVERRIDE SHIT FOR THE FIRST TIME

[@MNK_Games]

Megdad sir why dont you start a skillshare channel... for all things in 3d u teach... it would be super hit over there....

[@SarfarazYeaseen]

It's an amazingly nice explanatory tutorial. My opinion on the new render layer system is that it got more visually helpful but made the process lengthy. The old render layers needed less clicks for layer overrides.

[@an.unarmed.civilian]

yeah i kind of miss the old one sometimes. for quick/ simple scenes it was super fast.

[@prasanthchundakkattil2137]

This is the best tutorial about the layer set up and overright

[@Mohansundaram-g9m]

Thanks buddy you saved my day in office

[@i20010]

13:20 Yes we need, for the bounce light.

[@ellyketchum3290]

I love that even someone who knows his shit the way this guy does, names his objects DON'T TOUCH so he doesn't forget they are done. love it :D

[@meghdad61]

Haha. It was actually the file I gave my class to work on, so I had to name it that way, but still 👍

[@particle808]

Excellent tutorial, exactly what I was looking for. Easy to follow and learn new render set up for Maya. Thank you 🙏🏻

[@egey.]

one of the best channel and explanation.Thank you so much

[@conceptinstinct3287]

OK, this is the best I've seen

[@clemencepiriou4812]

Super Professional, better than at school! Thank you very much!

[@trusql]

Very good, detailed tutorial and explanation.Thank you!

[@KenedyTorcatt]

Wowww! I really needed this specific tutorial! Thanks a lot!

[@yassinedjebbari4819]

This is an amazing source of information ! THANKS ALOT !

[@OscarTorresWork]

Awesome video thank you!

[@61Manjot]

best tutorial!!, detailed tutorial and explanation.Thank you!

[@user-fg6nv3vc8q]

This is sooooo good! Thank you so much! I finally figure out this render layer stuff!

[@noeveliz]

Thank you so much, i really appreciate it. Very clear, i've learned a lot!

[@atari2969]

Great tutorial. Any change of an update with GPU and shadow matte? They say 'This initial version has a number of limitations currently, including: no support for indirect lighting, no AOV generation, and possibly incorrect self-reflections in shadow-matte objects.' but my alpha channel is always a normal alpha channel and not a shadow matte (works perfectly fine with CPU). :(

[@jave567]

This saved me thank you so much!!!

[@MALBACHinc]

hi i have a question with the setup. If the vespa is parked on the tiled surface. how do i keep the reflection of the ground on the vespa's body. The legacy layer, i always keep the ground in the same layer with the vespa but PV off. Thank you~

[@MALBACHinc]

Overide visibilities in the same beauty layer?

[@sarahfav_5444]

Thankssss for this tutorial !

[@karkengchan9797]

Great tutorial and infos for beginners , thank you

[@mahen9394]

Great tutorial and well explained about render layer...Cheers

[@Gnda3e]

when I use the eye the background of the render becomes white and not black as in your example

[@Sakusha116]

Awesome tutorial, thank you

[@masoudrashidinezhad9429]

Thank you so much, Please learn more about Rigging, Thanks again.

[@artSqoolType]

Thank you! This is very helpful and clear.

[@vanesieg7097]

At the time of adding the shader override, the shadows do not appear, the whole white figure appears, do you know why?

[@ssmallthing]

So good, so clear!

[@wingchunelsner]

Absolutely great. Thanks a lot!

[@RohanGulig]

i have 2 shaders in one shader engine in surface naterial>lambert while in surface shader> aistanderd because of this my render setup only pick lamberds not aistanderd please can someone help me ?

[@raol635]

Thank you very much.

[@MOVEFOUNDRY]

This is awesome, thank you for doing this.

[@DDAschool]

Dude I need some help please. I have an ocean sequence that I need to render. The lighting artist has the shot complete with the character, beach and rocks. I need to composite the ocean on top of the those layers but I don't know the exact process can you help me?

[@khalidvfxartist]

thanks for this awesome tutorial. what do i have to do in order to separate Reflections for each on of the objects? lets say i have 2 objects in my scene. a mug and a table. and i need to separate table with the reflection of the mug and a separate layer of mug itself.

[@dichan4663]

Can you help me install Arnold Render for Maya 2019 with my Macbook Pro? Please! Thanks ^^

[@RahulGraphicDesign]

Thank you for sharing this 👍

[@gagangillpb03]

How you pick aov in layer? Which key you use?

[@sivapandianreffreference]

Great and really best tutorial. thanks so much ,,, god bless you

[@Jarheeead]

Hello, i'm facing a problem rightnow. I'm using vray as the engine and i can't find the shader material. What is the name of shader in vray?

[@mandeepthakur2630]

vray matte may be !

[@christypious9581]

try matte shadow or vray shadow.

[@BVCStudios]

Great tutorial, thank you! Quick question: I'm using redshift 3.5 with Maya render layers, and I was wondering if instead of separate render layers for shadows, you can just use the redshift AOVs for shadows instead? It would of course include the shadow information in beauty render layer but you would have your diffuseLighting/diffuseRaw AOVs to piece the scene back together. Any thoughts? Thanks!

[@devilsforkdigital1490]

Yes, you can. This tutorial shows a completely redundant render layer setup for shadows, since that's exactly what the matte shadow AOV is for in just about any renderer.

[@lovepreetsinghbrar101]

I try to make shadow layer.after applying shadow Mate when I see render view , it shows background (plane) completely black. Not only shadow. How I fix it? Please help! Please please!

[@mandeepthakur2630]

change the beauty option to shadow in render view setting

[@cerbus6597]

Im using 2019 maya and i dont have a merge AOV box

[@meghdad61]

It's in the "common" tab of render settings.

[@mialdfooladshekan4613]

best ever mate thanks for sharing your amazing knowledge mate

[@stephanie2107th]

anyone have an idea that what if I already turn on the legacy render layer setup but only the right bottom is appearing and the launch render layer window icon is missing????......maya 2018 reset quite a few times but the icon is still not coming out

[@gurpratapsangha7692]

Tried everything but my plain in whole white not transparent what to do

[@meghdad61]

Did you uncheck "opaque" on the geo? Also, you cannot see transparency unless you bring it in compositing tool.

[@AstEternal]

Yeah just adding another comment because this is a fantastic tut. big up

[@gastondupuy5289]

Great job!

[@ekoksoy]

its really nice tutorial. thank u so much sir!

[@sungerbob1786]

hey thanks for the great tutorial! i have a situation, i created a facing ratio ramp for a piece of cloth to have a different kind of reflection. the question is, how can i create a render layer or aov for facing ratio ramp i created for an objects shading?

[@meghdad61]

Hi Sunger, I hope I understand your question. It seems you have used a facing ratio to control your reflectivity. In PBR shading, you should know that whatever you do to create a shader, they always end up having 3 or 4 different passes. Reflectivity is one of the outputs, regardless of how it was created. It means when you are creating render layers/AOVs, it doesn't matter how you created the reflectivity, you just need to create an AOV for reflection.

[@cristianmend]

Icredible video, my school never teach us this theory and its free, thank you !!! LIKE & SUBSCRIBE

[@JPWestmas]

saved me a ton of time thanks!

[@sure5871]

thank you so much

[@nhungnguyen9821]

if I use Maya Software as my render engine, which shader should I use?

[@mandeepthakur2630]

use arnold shader

[@kuangjuitsou1699]

it didn't render all layers for me, i still got the beauty only...

[@jjoannoteguy5670]

Hi, thanks for your tutorial, it's really helpful and really well explained, so congrats for that. But I have a question. If you want to override an animation in rotation for example, I've tried with an absolute override in rotation, so I have my animation but I can't see it in the curve editor so I can't control the curve to make as a spline curve, do you know how I can do this. Thanks in advance for your time, I'm stuck with this issue. :(.

[@hyrulecastl0kingdoom]

hi soo if i have to animate a character in a very detailled environment,interior. it takes too much time, should i do this layer technique to separate each characters beauty ,environments beauty, shadows, and does it really make the render faster ?. sorry if its a stupid question, im so tired of long renders XD. or should i just render with two layers one that contains the whole scene beauty and no cast shadows, and the second with shadow mate overide for the scene...

[@Xirpzy]

Hey this is very well done! Sadly I cant open the render setup window. Get an error that maya cant initialize the python script to launch it. Usually resetting preferences solves such issues but not this time, because the python script is in another location outside the prefs folder. Doesnt get replaced when I rename it and restart maya either. Have another pc that can render but its slower so i would like to solve this.Only way I see is reinstalling maya but its the institutions license so dont know if I can reinstall without knowing log in and license.

[@karunakarch4494]

Really Great job

[@WillPreston3D]

if i picked up a scene with 50 render layers with lots of overrides and sub collections, and there's a mesh i want to replace in the scene with out loosing all the intricate layers set up is there away to replace it? there was in softimage (match partitions)

[@luong-hoela5247]

how do u create absolute override for visibility in render view

[@ajimator1131]

i got this error when render : // Error: V-Ray : Cannot create output image file "/_tmpscene camry 3 render.exr": Permission denied (13) can anyone help me?

[@drejey1931]

thank you master!

[@devilsforkdigital1490]

Well, this is a very long winded and wordy tutorial for the amount of content (should have been half the length), but is a nice quick overview of the most important basics of the incredibly convoluted mess that is Render Setup. However, the production approach is questionable -- doesn't take into account the need for things like reflections, GI or AO from the scene as a whole (none of the three layers knows about the other two render layers, and should have been set up with everything on each layer but with primary rays off for invisible elements). Also, if you're going to output your shadows this way, you might as well just use the matte shadow AOV in whatever renderer you're using, since you did not separate out the ground shadows (often what compers want) from self shadowing, which is what I was expecting. And you seem confused about the matte shadow AOV, which you enable but then don't need or use anyway since your shadow passes are in the alpha of the shadow render layers. I know this tut is four years old, but also on top of all of this the advent of cryptomattes has changed the way that compositing is done anyway. Overall this is quite an overly complex setup for such a simple scene. A simple set of back to beauty AOVs and cryptomattes would be the way to go today, with possibly the ground shadows on their own layer only.

[@ateeqmonish]

Mate your this tut is blowing...simply amazing...i learned a lot....but can u help me... actually after seeing your tut i made a camera which was covered with glass. I made seperate layers each for camera mesh as well as glass, but when i compose both sequences on ae, the glass layer on top of camera layer, it hides the camera layer. I used 'screen' blend mode and it actually helped but the opposite side of the glass was also visible... I am unable to figure out how to solve this...please if you can help.

[@hamidthephysicist6376]

Have you found a solution ? Im facing the same issue ? (I have find like work around with Color ID but Im not 100% satisfied ) .

[@nguyenbui90]

Do you know how to collapse all layers at once?

[@renegabicho7075]

Can you please Tell What is Vespa? and what is AOV and what it does? sorry i cant search it in google what is vespa, I'm only self studying please reply soon.. thank you

[@mandeepthakur2630]

motorcycle name is vespa !!!!

[@Hi.Marloosha]

Hey, when I try to view the layer in renderview, when i click on the checkerbutton to see the objects by themselves in white, the whole renderview turns white, and i believe it includes the lights as objects?? How can I fix this so that way it's transparent in renderview? edit: nvm, found out how. thanks for the tutorial :D (i saw the comment saying to go to the skyshader, the shape tab > visibility > Camera andthen type 0 )

[@meghdad61]

It might be your env sphere blocking the transparency. Set its visibility to camera to off.

[@Hi.Marloosha]

yeah after posting my comment, i found another comment of yours saying how to fix this. Thanks man :))

[@arifbosstanci]

thank you

[@nigelsmith7717]

Excellent!!!

[@haneefbhatti951]

THANK YOU FOR THIS!!! I am having trouble, I have done a layer (beauty) but I when I press the alpha channel button, it is ALL WHITE??? Why my alpha channel is NOT showing up? What I am not doing right? Please help! THANK YOU!!!

[@meghdad61]

Hi Haneef, I remember something like that has happened to me before, but I can't remember what was causing the issue. It was a very simple fix. On the top of my head, are you using IBL? Perhaps your skydome is causing the issue. Try turning off its primary visibility. If using Arnold, I guess you have to turn "Camera" attribute on your skydome down to zero, which means invisible to camera.

[@meghdad61]

@Shreyash More it might be you Hdri background! Select the hdri sphere and turn it off to the camera ( by going to the shape tab -> visibility -> Camera and type 0

[@meghdad61]

@Shreyash More sorry that's all i can help remotely!

[@alvarozacarias6248]

so complex, friend, you need to do this class with a less complex scene.

[@aminsalehkho]

اقا مقداد دمت گرم خدا قوت خسته نباشید خدا وکیلی عالی بود کارت اگه مثل خودم لهجه نداشتی اصلا فکرش رو نمی کردم ایرانی باشی

[@meghdad61]

ممنون اقا امین عزیز

[@masoudrashidinezhad9429]

Excuse me TEACH more about Rigging, Thank you

[@povilasprokapas1552]

You have black outlines all over your objects. This needs to to be fixed in order for shot to look as it supposed to. I'm not sure how to do it in AE but I know how to solve it in NukeX

[@jindori22]

Where is Backdrop reflection?

[@meghdad61]

In this case, my backdrop didn't have reflection. But if it does, and you want to have a separate AOV for it, you can include it in your AVO and render layers. Make sure to include other moving objects in the layer, and turn there "visible to camera" to zero, so they are only visible in reflection.

[@jindori22]

@@meghdad61 Thank you for your kind reply. My question is the backdrop reflection that reflects on Vespa.

[@meghdad61]

@@jindori22 Gotcha. In this scene, I think I just skipped that to make the tutorial easier. Not only we have to include the backdrop in the reflection on the Vespa, but also all other environment elements, if they are close to the Vespa geometry and they might have some reflection on it.

[@mohammadangelomoeomari5393]

@meghdad.asadi Thank you Keep up the great work!!

[@mingjiang1642]

这也太磨叽了吧，但是讲的真的很细很细，没法更细了。

[@No_Plastic]

Thank you but sorry you talk just a tad too much to explain and time's really tight when you're on a crunch time. why does this need to be one hour and some!

[@WBPayne]

This is stupid complicated. absolute fail by Autodesk

[@Laser-rot]

Long winded much?

[@ACES-BRAZIL]

No Man... Wrong Way For Production

[@Jarheeead]

You have the right one?

[@ACES-BRAZIL]

yes .. after 20 years of studies...

[@mandeepthakur2630]

@@ACES-BRAZIL Fuck u