Creating stage basics from vectors. Object Referencing, Preset Scenes, and Batch Rendering

Bryan from Costa Rica reached out for help creating content for his stage, and I saw this as a great opportunity to record the process on video. I edited the recording down to an hour and a half, adding chapters to make it more accessible. You might want to skip or speed up certain sections, depending on your focus.

In this lesson, I’ll give you an example that is a huge time-saver. If you have recurring tasks, I encourage you to develop your own pipeline.

00:40 prepare and clean vector
07:40 export masks
09:10 order and export shape animation
12:30 export and reference 3d files
25:20 outline animations
37:10 batch rendering preset fast scenes (full resuolution)
41:31 batch rendering heavy preset scenes (half resolution)
44:10 upscaling half resolution renders
46:10 resolume composition setup, effects and mixing fun !

When working on stages, I keep a consistent file and folder structure for my renders. I have a 3D scene for each preset, which allows me to easily batch render everything at once. This means my main task is just updating the main reference geometry of which I have a few: stagecam, stageflat, stage3d, outline.

Each model serves a specific purpose:

• stagecam: Contains the camera with the ideal distance for rendering.

• stageflat: A flat mesh representing the stage for stage color transformations.

• stage3d: An extruded 3D model of the stage for shadow effects

• outlines: Used for creating outlines.

Along with these, I use preset files like color1, color2, light3, scale1, etc. These scenes reference stagecam, stageflat, or stage3d, with effects and colors automatically applied, and the correct render settings already in place. This setup allows me to batch render directly to DXV .mov by simply loading the preset scenes and setting the resolution—done in a few clicks.

For heavy clips, I render PNG sequences and use an upscaler. If needed, I also apply frame interpolation, as I explain in this post: https://www.patreon.com/posts/105587899/

The best part of having a consistent file structure is that when I load a Resolume composition from my last stage mapping, the stage clips are automatically replaced with the new ones. All effects, adjustments, and layering are already set up and ready to go.

Stage Project Folder Structure

This is my main folder. It contains reference geometry files, a few PNG masks. Clips folder contains the renderings and DXV Files. max folder contains the preset 3d scenes. vector folder contains Illustrator files. Of course this is a lightweight version. Sometimes my folder can have up to 50 renderings and there are more preset files.

max folder

clips folder

vector folder

In 3ds Max I use these two plugins:

Overnight Batch Render by Spline Dynamics
https://www.splinedynamics.com/overnight-batch-render-manual

SmartRefs
https://www.smartrefs.com