Render depth buffer?

shoei321

I am trying to render a depth map (z-buffer) of a scene and am not having any luck.    I've followed instructions I found posted in this thread :

1. Select the camera you want to use (or create a new one if you don't want to lose your current settings)
2. Open the Shader Builder
3. Expand the Volume tree and find RI_DepthCue
4. Apply that to your selected camera
5. Render

But all I get out of it is a regular render, no visible differences after applying the RI_DepthCue (or Fog) shader to the camera.     Are there any additional steps I'm missing here?  Do I need to be using a specific renderer to make this work?   I've tried all of the available renderers - OpenGL, Iray, 3Delight, no luck.

 

Thanks

 

Richard Haseltine

The R of RI is renderman, so that's 3Delight (which is DS's Renderman Compliant engine). Are you compiling the shader when it says "Apply to selected camera"?

shoei321

I didn't realize these shaders are only for 3Delight.    Is there any way to read the depth buffer in an OpenGL render?   

To give a bit of context, I'm trying to do this via the SDK using DzPBufferView.    I'm able to get the resulting image data of a basic OpenGL render, but I don't see where I'd get a handle on an OpenGL context to read the depth buffer after the render.    Am I barking up the wrong tree?

 

Thanks