Welcome to animating render layers.
So this is all about swapping out models and taking control over what is appearing in our scene at any
one time.
Now this is critical when you don't want to see the breaks before an object actually breaks.
Very important when it comes to things like glass and ceramics where you can really see the cracks in
a surface.
Now we can get away with it on some objects like our brick work.
Now of course this doesn't have to just be used when you're fracturing objects you can swap models out
if you're about to do something that's need in need of a different model.
So you may already have a model that's what happens when something breaks apart.
You may have modelled in detail exactly how you want that broken apart.
Again this is referring back to breaks admittedly but you could swap out one model for another if you
just wanted to make things literally appear and then go pop and change to something else.
Now glass objects would look absolutely awful if you just had the brakes being rendered so this is one
of the main reasons why you'd want to swap out models is simply because it would it wouldn't look right.
No other difference than that now swapping out the model at the moment the braking will solve that issue.
So this is mainly to do with rendering an animation more than anything else but it can also be useful
when trying out different models as where you can flick between them.
Great if you're showcasing your work as well.
So let's go play with this now and hop on over in the blender.
Okay so I'm in a brand new blender file at this point.
And what we need to do is first learn where underlayers are and what they are.
So you'll render layers are quite simply the layers that you've got active at any one time and you can
control those as well and have different settings for the slenderer render layers.
So where are they.
Well if we go over to the Properties window and click on the second tab and if we hover over that we
can see it's called render layers.
So go over there now.
Now you can have several render layers already set up if you want to we're just going to deal with one
at the moment to keep things straight forward.
Now the ones that were going to be interested in at the moment of a scene layer and the exclude layer.
Now you cannot annamay the scene layer.
So we try and go over the top of any of those and press I it just says layers property can not be animated
we can see the error in the top up there on the info head.
So what can we animate.
Well we can animate the exclude now it is important that we realize that the exclude itself the whole
thing is animated not the individual layers that confuse me something rotten.
When I first started using blender as I y car and I was as basically turning one thing off on one thing
and getting myself in a complete muddle.
So we'll go through animating and making sure it works.
Now one of the very important things at this point before you even start playing with the render layers
and excluding them is realising what is on what layer.
So first of all I'm just going to turn on my I'm not sure if I got it turned on.
So I'm going to go to my add ons and go to layers.
Now I haven't got layer management turned on one of those other ones I forgot.
And when to save me use a setting so with the layer management on I can go to the layer tab in the tool
shelf and start thinking consciously about what my layers are called.
So it's at this point you want to realize that some of your stuff you want to make sure is never excluded.
Like your lighting for instance unless you wanted your scene to go completely dark.
So with that we can call layer one.
Well I wouldn't call layer one lighting.
I think that would be silly since everything starts on layer 1 less you started playing really a lot
with your start-up file.
So we can call this one let's say basic And what's this layer down here.
Now we don't know that that's layer 11 so you can see the little eyeball when I've clicked down here
on the 3d header to header and switched to a different layer.
We've got layer 11 turned on and lera leavens got nothing on it.
I'm going to call that lighting.
Yeah.
Lighting and lighting and camera.
I'm going to put the two on the same layer.
Okay so now we have lighting and cameras set up we better move the lighting and camera to that less.
I'm going to go back to layer 1 and move those two objects with the M key o m and then this layer down
here and then hopefully they will be on the right layer.
Now just to make sure things are working as we'd expect them to I'm going to press front.
Oh I'm going to press F 12 here and there we go it's going to render out and we can see here we've got
light in our scene.
That's because if we look over here on the render layers we've got layer 1 and layer 11 both active.
If we had forgotten and only had lael one active then of course when we go ahead and render it is no
lighting.
Apart from the ambient lighting that's in the environment so it is important you realise whatever ones
of these are turned on are going to be included when you actually hit the render whether that's an animation
or whether a still render like this.
Now if you wanted more than one of these active then you could quite easily hold down the shift button
and click the ones you wanted or even just click and drag over the top in you see them turn on.
And if they're in the state of turning them on they don't turn others off.
And if they're in the state of turning things off like they are at the moment they will turn everything
off that you move the mouse over.
So now we got an idea of how we can turn them on and off.
The next thing we need to do is work out how to animate that so we can switch things in and out whether
that be a fractured object so they don't start fracture.
Very important if it's something like glass you could quite easily imagine if it was a glass cube that
we were dingly with and we'd fractured it would look horrible it before it was supposed to be broken.
So in order to emulate this properly what we can do here is are not going to fracture this particular
object this time.
I've got my basic object on Layer 1 on layer 2.
I'm going to go ahead and add myself something completely different a cone and I'm also going to move
up one blender units as well.
So is occupying the same space.
Now this is on layer 2.
We can check that by just isolating layer 2 we can do it down here or in the render layers tab.
So you can move individually around.
Now remember we will always need this bottom one on layer 11.
Otherwise will have no light in our scene.
So we've got these two things on different layers Now ordinarily because you cannot annamay the layers
themselves.
We have to have all of them turned on.
Now that they're all turned on we have the annamay.
When we exclude certain layers and it's the state of the entire block that is animated.
So if we start off with excluding layer 2 and we keep that in by pressing I and then go to lay that
frame let's say 25 or thereabouts this is 29 some really off of manski Use the Selecter 24.
There we go one second later.
I'm going to key in a new set up.
So this time Layer one is excluded.
And that will be everything there is on Layer 1.
So this is where you have to really be organized about your layers.
So now as we go through we should see that it starts off with layer 2 being excluded and then layer
one becomes the excluded one.
Okay.
So how does that look.
Well let's go ahead and and make between frame 1 and 50.
I'm going to check my settings for rendering.
I've recently installed an external graphics card for my Mac.
So some of these settings do need changing is going to save this.
This scene that we're working on here.
So I'm just going to call this a render layers and a Save that there and I'm literally going to render
an animation so I got up to the render tab and hit render animation and we can see it's just going to
go through here and render or it's not going to be particularly exciting but we should see now as it's
rendering because it's rendering it one frame every one and a half seconds not particularly stellar.
Now we should see and in fact if it's going mislav could have condense that example.
But once it reaches an enormous there have a look once that reaches frame 24 hour Q will spontaneously
become a cone.
How awesome is that.
And you can use this to control your renders very very accurately.
And it's a great way of making sure let's say if something started as a solid and then it was breaking
up that you didn't have an issue when it came to actually rendering it in the first place because the
last thing you want is a piece of glass or something that's breaking apart.
Now we could get away with it on the wall remember because of the the kind of wall texture and walls
tend to have cracks and bumps in them so that's not a problem.
But if it was glass and we can we can accentuate that now we can actually see what would happen.
So we've got these two objects here and I'm not going to make one of them.
Well we could actually make one of them the broken Square we can go back and do this.
And so the easiest way of doing that would be to go back to the 3D view fracture of this well let's
go to the second layer first and delete that cube.
Go back to the first.
The Cube layer here and then let's fracture it so let's go and sell fracture.
And I am not too fussed of how it ends up fractured.
So we've got all the broken layer on layer 2 and let's give these guys a material that is glass.
I'm going to use nodes and when I go to a glass B s the F and let's just render that out and see what
it looks like.
So that's what it looks like we have.
That is the fractured one I was with it both turned on.
So the but the way of just checking this and in fact that would change is were looking around.
Perfect.
Okay.
I'm going to add a floor plain and scale that up.
I'm going to put give that new material in just a diffuse material that's fine.
Of course we've got the lighting turned off at the moment as well.
There we go.
So our glass is sitting on a table or whatever and I'm just going to give the lamp a bit more brightness
as we are going to make it sunlamp to start with not a brightness of 100 maybe even a brightness of
two.
There we go.
So that's not too bright there.
And that's what it looks like.
And of course when we break it apart and let's just swap these layers over.
Oh.
Here we go.
I've got my ground on layer 1.
See how easy it is to forget.
So let's move the ground to layer three.
Then I can have layer three and one turned on or what whatever combination I want I just gotta remember
to turn them on so we see here.
This one's fractured and it looks significantly different too.
This one here and we can even render that out just to make sure it makes sense.
I'm going to play and then actually render that out now and instead of you guys watching I'm going to
wait until we can actually play it back sensibly Okay so what's going on here the floors not for not
being shown.
Why is this happening.
It's because I've actually turned off and this is a good idea to watch your renders he can see the problems
live here.
The scene only has layer one turned on and I want at least these four layers turned on.
In fact everything wouldn't be a bad idea unless I had things hidden of course.
So let's go ahead once more and this time ungless Swap the mauvais just so it's nice and quick.
I'm going to have a friend 20 frame animation I will swap them over at Frane.
HENN a case of frame 10 would get a key in they exclude it should still starts excellence.
The VAT's goes all the way to here.
Okay so initially we want to exclude the broken one which is on layer 2 which is fine.
And then we want to exclude Layer 1 that's key that in some two and then one perfect.
So now when we go ahead and I render the animation everything should be there.
Course this is taking a lot longer to surrender now because we've got a glass shader in there rather
than diffuse.
So I'm glad I did cut the frames down even though now it's going to take a bit longer but we'll see
when we play the animation back in a few moments.
The difference it makes.
Okay so here we go we're just finishing off the final frame.
It's only 20 frames in total and I can go to render and playback the rendered animation just to see
what it looks like and we can see there it's flicking between the two quite rapidly because there's
less than the second between them.
But we get to see the difference.
Now one this nice clean one at the very beginning is how it would look if you were trying to have just
as a basic glass cube and then we've got this horrible artefacts one where it's actually broken.
So you can see the difference there that it would make if you were rendering an object in such a way
whether it's cracked or.
Well mainly if it's cracked and this is also a great example if you just need to swap something out.
So say you're going to transmute between two things instantly lap top away you go.
Well you can do that using this technique as well.
Just remember you've only got so many layers to work with.
So use them sparingly but use them intelligently as well.
And remember you can always set up scenes if you were doing a full blown animation even if it was just
a short time.
Each scene would be seconds long.
You would not try and cram everything into one scene you'd generate a new scene to do that.
Okay.
Brilliant.
How are you guys getting on.
Can you think of some other uses for this.
I'd love to hear your ideas.
Over on the forum.
So join us for an end of TV and I'll see you guys in the next lecture.