Tiny gaps between render layers

[steflad]

Hi there,

I'm trying to use render layers as I have to create an animation of a watch where part materials a changing over time.
I have just noticed that there are some tiny gaps in between the layers.

What did I do wrong?

Many thanks for your help.
s.

[Rex]

Hey steflad,

These gaps are due to the anti-aliasing of the layers. You must use the full rendered image as the base/background image to fill in the gaps.

Best regards,
Rex

[steflad]

thanks for your prompt answer Rex.

That what I feared. So it won't help me to render and composite different parts the texture of which are changing over time as the base would then be a different color/texture.

How would you tack this kind of animation? with the clown pass?

thanks again
s.

[Rex]

It depends on your scenario. Can't you just layer the parts that are changing and animate the opacity of the top layer to fade out and reveal the next layer?

[steflad]

yes that was my original plan. But those anti-aliasing gaps between layers are going to be an issue as colors can change a lot: if I use a watch with a black wristband as a base, it may not look good with a red band over it.

[Will Gibbons]

If I understand what you're doing correctly, I had to find a bit of a workaround for this....

For a client, I took a silicone sports wrist band with 12 colors and 8 areas where the color could change and made him a .PSD of each area as each color so you basically just toggle on and off each layer allowing you to show every color combo. This was used to generate images and coded onto the website so the user can customize the band... like Nike ID shoes. (site isn't live yet... hopefully soon).

What I ended up doing, is rather than using render layers:

1. Apply each color/material I wanted to the ENTIRE model.
2. Queue all those up as jpg or with transparent bkg... whatever you need there
3. Add a scene set and apply high-contrast flat colors to each part of the watch/band
4. Queue up the flat one or/and select clown pass
5. In PS, load all files into stack
6. Duplicate the clown/flat pass (which ever one works best) for each color/option you have (in my case, 8 areas)
7. Use the magic wand tool to delete all but 1 area of the flat/clown pass you're using and clean up the edges with refine... I used this to shift the edge out one or two pixels to avoid the gap you're getting
8. Repeat step 7 for each area
9. Put all the different color/material passes into 1 folder and label 'color'
10. Duplicate this folder for each area you have to change colors on (for me, this would be
11. Now, take each clown pass you created and turn it into a mask and label it and place each mask above each folder

The result you're left with is a non-destructive Photoshop file that allows you to toggle options on and off. Then, if you wish, you can just save out a .jpg or .tif for the client should they want another color combo and do it on the fly.

The whole thing although it sounds time-intensive may have only taken me about 3 hours start to finish... for me was worth it because of how many combos I'd have to render if I didn't do it this way.

Hope that helps!