MtoA Solo material and Render selected only explanation

[AlanEddie]

Ok so the issue is, does Arnold respect the Maya version of "Render selected only" or not ?

I see when Isolate selected is on in Arnold renderview, it acts on selected objects but also on selected nodes, like if I select say a Noise node, it will render just that in the view. If I turn on Render selected only in the Render view window in Maya and launch Arnold render view to render, my Maya is crashing. So I presume the Maya version of render selected only, is to be ignored when using Arnold ?

Tks.

[AlanEddie]

Hi there, I'm pretty sure in Arnold 4. ? when I used the soloMaterial command in Maya, it would solo the material in my render (as well as just viewport and the Maya material viewer). This worked well for me as I used a hotkey and don't need to open up the Hypershade. I think it reverted to soloing in the viewport and the material viewer (Arnold 5), is this the case? or is there a switch or something I am missing.? Tks. (Of course maybe Maya changed the behaviour, separate to Arnold)

[brian_Foley]

@Alan Eddie I'm not sure the 2 work together but I don't think you need to do it that way.

You can click and select objects inside the Arnold render window and then select the shader in the Attribute window. If your issue is that you don't want to switch nodes in isolate selected then you can click on the lock at the bottom of the render view when you select your shader.

[AlanEddie]

Ok so what I have found, bit confusing.

Maya is renderer agnostic so the information is as follows (correct me if wrong.)

1.Maya Renderview (MRV) has the option Render Selected Only, this is sort of tied to the window itself and caused instability with Arnold renderview (ARV). If using Arnold with just the MRV, its fine and works.

2.Solo material works in viewport 2 and Material viewer in Hypershade but not in the renders.

3.ARV fills in for both of the above with Isolate selected, so can use that instead, for objects and also say if a node like Grid is selected in node editor, it will render the effect of that node in ARV.

4.There are scripts that can do a physical render selected only, by hiding objects, calling ARV and then unhiding objects when done, if a more manual approach is required. (ie. with Isolate Selected in ARV, it will matte out objects as black if obscuring the selected item, this may not be what you want.)

Phew.