Hey y’all. So today I'm going to be talking to you guys about Render Groups in Tiktok Effect House. In Effect House, a render group is a container that groups related objects together to optimize rendering.
Guys, I'm going to say render groups like a lot in this so just follow along. So render groups are automatically added when you add an object in the hierarchy panel. And you can also add a render group by right clicking in the hierarchy panel and clicking add render group.
Now how do render groups actually work? So let's say I want to add an image. So I would hit add 2D image, right there.
You'll see that the image object automatically appears within the 2D foreground effects render group that it's assigned to. You can also rename a render group by right-clicking on it and then selecting rename, which is handy if you have duplicates of a certain render group or you have a lot of objects to keep track of. But for now, I'll just leave it the way it is.
So an important thing to note is that all objects added from the object menu have an assigned render group that they'll automatically be characterized under. So for example, if I want to add a cube, it'll automatically show up in the existing general render group to which it belongs to. You might also notice that these render groups have their own cameras, so these cameras will only render the objects within their respective render groups.
You can also add multiple cameras to a group and adjust their render order and layers to achieve different effects. So in total, there are seven different types of render groups in Effect House. So far we've seen the general and 2D foreground effects render groups.
Let me go ahead and show you the other render groups by adding objects from the hierarchy panel. We have the 2D background effects, which is in charge of segmentation objects. You would just go to add segmentation and then portrait segmentation.
We have a generative effects render group that houses generative effect objects like Eyebrow Eraser. Like, go ahead and get rid of that and no more eyebrows. looks really weird, but just showing you guys for the purpose of this tutorial.
Next, we have the post effects render group, which allows you to add cool things like filters. And then we have a face mask effects render group. And finally we have a face shapes effects render group.
So that allows you to do things like face stretch and face liquify, things like that. So, now you might have noticed that all of these render groups get listed in a specific order when they're added to the hierarchy panel. So this ordering happens by default and it's meant to optimize your effect with TikTok's built-in effects.
So you can also choose whether to combine your effect with TikTok's built-in effects or overwrite them by going to file properties and change the settings accordingly. I want to emphasize that the placement of render groups in the hierarchy panel determines the order in which they get rendered. So this basically means that the render group at the top of the hierarchy panel will render first, while the render group at the bottom will render last.
So it's basically like you're reading guys from top to bottom. If you want to change the rendering order, simply drag the render group and drop it in your preferred placement. So for example, if I want the face mask to render in front of the image object, all I have to do is drag the face mask effects render group beneath the 2D foregrounds effects render group in order to render the face mask in front of the image.
So now we're going to talk about camera order. In Effect House, you can use multiple cameras to achieve different effects. Within an individual render group You can actually use different cameras to render the scene onto different render textures.
So this basically means when using multiple cameras, it's important to keep layers and render textures in mind. To break that down in a render group, there are objects, okay, these objects exist on a layer, and so the camera effectively views the layer and then outputs the final image onto a render texture, which is simply a texture that shows what the camera is looking at. So your camera basically looks at a layer with objects in it and then spits all of that out into a final render texture.
But definitely keep in mind, guys, that an exception is made from this rule for light objects. Basically, a light object is the defined layer that can be applied to all render groups. So for example, if a light is assigned to a certain layer all objects within that layer will be affected by that light object regardless of the render group they’re in.
In Effect House each camera has a render order property which determines when the respective layers get rendered. Okay, so cameras with a lower render value, they will render first. Cameras with a higher render order value will render last.
So let's look at this example. So you'll see that by default, this general render group has a camera. If I take a look at the inspector panel, I'll see that the camera is set to a default layer and has a render order of zero, meaning it will be the first camera to render.
I can change this value if I want to, but for now I'll just leave it as it is. Then I want to add an object like a cube. I'll see that it's also automatically set to the default layer.
So now I'll go ahead and add another camera by right clicking add object, scene, and then camera. In the inspector panel I'll see this camera to render only layer one. Cameras can render multiple layers, but I'll just have this camera render layer one, in this case.
You'll notice that this camera has a render order value of one since it was added after the default camera. So next, I'm going to go ahead and add a different object. I'm gonna just add a sphere this time.
So I would just go to add 3D and then sphere. I'll set the sphere’s layer to layer one. Unlike cameras, objects can be only assigned to one layer.
These cameras are responsible for different objects on different layers. So when I disable the original camera, I won't be able to see the cube in the preview. But if we disable camera one, we won't be able to see the sphere.
Now I can also play around with the render order if I want to. So right now the original camera has a render order value of zero, so the object is rendering the cube first, which is why it's behind the sphere. If I change the camera's render order to a higher value, I'll just go change the render order to camera ten.
You'll notice in the preview that the cube renders after the sphere which is assigned to the other camera. So that's it for now. Thank you so much for joining and we'll see you on the next one.
For more information about render group, be sure to check out our documentation at effecthouse. tiktok.
