[Bf-committers] Layers and Renderlayers, a strange fact

[Michele Coke]

Hello,
as everyone of you knows, the selected layers have to be the same of those 
set in selected RenderLayer in order to be rendered, otherwise, you'll 
obtain just the Sky as written in the manual at this link:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Render_Layers#Finding_RenderLayers
In other words, you have to sync the visible layers with ones in renderlayer 
in order to render.
That means for Blender that an hidden layer is equal to an not-renderable 
layer, in other words, a layer is hidden AND not-renderable.
That's bit strange compared to a simple logic used also in other softwares, 
where a layer could be hidden BUT STILL renderable or viceversa or both.
In my opinion, this sync should be avoided and it could be done in a simple 
way, because there's all ready in Blender.
Let's make an example:
I have to model a car from a box using simple planes with attached images as 
references.
The car is in layer 1, the planes are in layer 2.
Now, before to render the car, I should deactivare layer 2, then hitting 
F12. At the end of the render, reactivate the layer 2 to continue the job.
A boring process ! What to do to speed up things  ?
Thanks to RenderLayers, I could create one called "Just_Car", which has set 
only layer 1, and when I press Shift + F12, Blender will use layers set in 
actual renderlayer to render, in my case, Blender will not consider layer 2 
because is turned off in Just_Car.
It's quite simple, isn't ?
This is a simple example, but the list could be huge.
In this way, I suppose, it can avoid the creation of Layer Manager for the 
moment, even if it should be taken in consideration, with a simple keyboard 
shortcut.
But the worst thing about sync is not ended here.
If you create a renderlayer node and you want to render only that node using 
the "Re-render this layer", AGAIN, you have to sync layers, otherwise you'll 
obtain just sky !
Does someone here think I'm wrong ?
Waiting for answer,
Thanks and sorry for my english.
Michael

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