Cineversity

I did some search for to render a specific pass only and most of the answers were “cinema4d’s render engine can’t render only one pass,it needs to calculate the others too.”
Is it really impossible to render just a single pass, for example depth pass or ao pass only?

Hi Sakbatou,

Set the “multi pass” to “Depth” only and you get only this pass as result written on the disk.

To save time you might switch off Textures and Lights. (If you need the Alpha information from some objects in the Depth Path (not available in older versions), you might leave textures on. (Render Settings >Options.) Check Reflections, refractions, etc. It is all not needed for that. (make a new render setting for that)

The Depth information is sometimes relatively fast rendered in this way, but if your scene contains a lot of complex animation, all of that might be needed to be calculated again, if not cached in the first place. No need for GI either. You might know better what is in you scene and what is not needed for the depth pass anyway, just go one time along the Render Settings>Options.

Certainly switch off Anti Alias. The depth information is a measurement, not an image information in the first place. To get nice results the common practice is to render in double size, scale up the footage in question and scale after it down. The quality is much better. I know that some people argue other wise, and that since the ‘90s…

So, I would say the answer is yes, C4D can render a single pass. I would love to get a Dollar for each wrong answer in the web…

Have a good one

Sassi

So much thanks for the fast answer also a very helpful one.
I’ll do as you said.
It’s wonderful to know that at least this title busted a lie.

Hey Zoltan,

You’re welcome. If you do not save the file in a specific folder you might search it, as the name might have changed with a “depth” in it.

Good luck with it and really check out the “Render Settings”> Options

All the best

Sassi