Visibility Sets: Creating, Assigning and Modifying

One of the most important properties of a pass in RPManager is what objects are visible when the pass is rendered. This is accomplished through 'Visibility Sets'. These sets are very similar in concept to Selection Sets within 3dsmax, and as with Selection Sets (and as distinct from Layers in 3dsmax) an object may be a member of any number of Visibility sets.

Creating Visibility Sets:

The easiest way to create a visibility set is by using the Pass Lists 'Visibility Sets' columns Right Click menu. The following screen capture should make it a little easier to understand.

Note that in the Create Visibility Set dialog there are a number of options on what to add to the set being created - selected objects, visible objects, all objects or no objects. The easiest way to assign the correct objects to the set being created is to select them in the viewport before creating the sets.

Quicktime Movie demonstrating creating a visibility sets. 982k (zip 209k)

Assigning Visibility Sets:

The easiest way to assign a visibility set to a pass is to have it assigned upon creation - the 'Apply to Currently Selected Passes' in the Create Visibility Set dialog. To assign a set at a later date is accomplished by using the Visibility Sets column Right-Click 'Assign a Visiblity Set...' menuitem:

Quicktime Movie demonstrating assigning visibility sets. 642k (zip 117k)

Modifying Sets:

Modifying sets is something you will do often - ie when creating new objects they will need to be added to a set else they will by default not be part of any sets and so may be hidden - so this is something that is easy to do in RPManager. The easiest way to modify a set is again via the Visibility Sets columns Right-Click menu. In this menu is an item to add the selected objects in the scene to the selected passes visibility sets, and an item to remove them. Also two items to redefine the selected passes sets to either all selected or all visible objects.

Quicktime Movie demonstrating adding/removing objects from visibility sets. 1.5meg (zip 366k)

You can also use the 'Visibility Set Manager' dialog to modify sets. See the help file for specifics on this dialog.

TIP There are two special Visibility sets you can assign to your passes - '_Everything_' and '_Nothing_'. As the names imply these are all objects and no objects. These can be assigned from the Vis Sets columns Right-Click menu, 'Set to Everything' and 'Set to Nothing'.