: render fun (not)

I sent shots 1,3, and 7 to render today after spending most of the afternoon splitting them up into render passes - I'll see what happens when I get back into lab tomorrow morning -

I learned a few things today:

maya batch render from command line:
don't now how I've lived without it all this time. Thanks to Gary for helping me debug my batch file.

maya fluid alphas:
- maya fluids doesn't need to have a custom alpha passed under the frame buffer options (I'll have to ask Boaz later exactly why.) Also how do I generate a zdepth pass from this?

Connected the light direction output of a directional light to the directional light input of a fluid shader:
as long as self-shadowing is on, it's possible to use the stand-alone directional light to change the direction of the source light for clouds in the scene. (I'm using the internal directional light in the clouds in all of my shots.)

Black Hole Mattes:
use the black hole matte opacity to deal with clouds enveloping an object.