What's the Best Way to Make an Object Invisible?

Inkubo

I tried changing an Eye Moisture object's shader to make it completely invisible, and noticed a that when I did that the little colored blocks showing what Carrara renders stuck around for a while on the character's eyes. Everything else in the scene rendered quickly, but Carrara had to stop to think longer about a shader meant to have no effect whatsoever on the scene!

Is there a better way to make stuff invisible, one that won't slow down the render?

Dartanbeck

It might help if we new how you did what you've done to make them invisible.

I have an "Invisible" shader that I include in all of my scenes that need something turned invisible, so that I can use that one single shader for everything that needs invisibility. Here's what that shader is:

All channels in the shader are turned to "None" except Alpha channel, which is Value 1-100 = 0

Inkubo

Well, I was groggy this morning and typed a couple of things wrong there... I meant to say "I tried changing an EyeReflection object's shader's Alpha channel to 0% to make it completely invisible..." That was pretty important info I just left out. Sorry about that.

This is on Minotaur 6 HD, as always, and I guess my question still stands about what's the fastest and most resource-efficient way to make an object invisible.

However, that being said, it appears I tricked myself in a couple of ways... I think the rendering delay was actually caused by the translucent eyelashes, not the EyeReflection's alpha, and the character's sclera are painted so dark that I thought the EyeReflection was still darkening the eyes despite supposedly being invisible.

Headwax

Depends what you want to hide

For a complicated tree

Fenric's posing pack 3

Sometimes, you've just got to hide things! But clicking the awkwardly-located "Visible" checkbox on imported content can be a chore. Just imagine hiding a hand with the fingers... oy! The new Set Figure Visibility command will do the hard work for you, activating or deactivating an entire chain of body parts with the click of a button.

 

Or in the model room you can select polys then click hide polys   View>Hide Selection

Or in the assembly room select the object in the instances list on the lower right and click the Visibility box off (find it top right under "general')

Or use Dart's suggestion and give it zero alpha in the shader room

Or delete it then do your render then go back and use Edit Undo to restore it

Or in the shader room change it's lighting model to shadow catcher then turn off shadows when you render (havnt tried this)

WendyLuvsCatz

to avoid unneeded transmapped objects or make things invisible without alpha to speed up the render the best solution is to not apply any alpha or transmaps to them rather remove them from view.

with corneas and eye moisture if not doing close ups I do this by selecting them in the vertex room and pulling them into the head.

Transmapped hair can be a resource hog in Carrara's engine too, fibermesh if it loads actually renders faster (some is terribly heavy though) unsimulated Carrara hair is even faster without highlights and excluded from the lights that do soft shadows

(you duplicate the light and make the second only light the hair instead and no soft shadows, even not cast any shadow if you can get away with it in the scene)

Inkubo

These are some good tips. I'm glad I asked the question even if it did take me two tries to get the question right.

I'm not sure I'll be able to do Carrara hair... While doing Diomedes' starter thread, after placing the hair cap, just as a test I clicked on the grow and tried to use it... CRASH!

Right now I'm importing DAZ hair, but I certainly do find it expensive in terms of load and save time.