Render layers

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Render layers" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (June 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "Render layers" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2024) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

When creating computer-generated imagery, final scenes appearing in movies and television productions are usually produced by rendering more than one "layer" or "pass," which are multiple images designed to be put together through digital compositing to form a completed frame.

Rendering in passes is based on a traditions in motion control photography which predate CGI. As an example, for a visual effects shot, a camera could be programmed to move past a physical model of a spaceship in one pass to film the fully lit beauty pass of the ship, and then to repeat exactly the same camera move passing the ship again to photograph additional elements such as the illuminated windows in the ship or its thrusters. Once all of the passes were filmed, they could then be optically printed together to form a completed shot.

The terms render layers and render passes are sometimes used interchangeably. However, rendering in layers refers specifically to separating different objects into separate images, such as a layer each for foreground characters, sets, distant landscape, and sky. On the other hand, rendering in passes refers to separating out different aspects of the scene, such as shadows, highlights, or reflections, into separate images.

^{[1] [2]}