renderStacks allows you to preview, render locally, and submit to the farm for multiple passes at once.
Preview
This allows you to get a quick preview render for selected passes using our free preview render utility, rsPrvRender. Pressing the “Preview” button is the same as activating a pass and pressing the Preview Render button in rsPrvRender.
If you just want to preview as-is without activating, you can do ALT+Preview. It will act exactly the same as just pressing the Preview Render button in rsPrvRender. This also means it will not do a multi-preview.
If you want to adjust Preview render settings, right-click the “Preview” button and select “Open rsPrvRender“.
Multi Preview
When you preview only one pass, you will see the result in your renderer’s frame buffer. If you have selected multiple passes and preview them at once, renderStacks will automatically save the preview of each pass in a temporary folder, then load all files in MrViewer or RamPlayer.
The multi-preview folder is “__rsPrv” under your project render output folder.
C:Users[username]Documents3ds Max 2021
enderoutput\__rsPrv
“Open Multi Preview Folder” in the right-click menu will open this folder.
Full Preview
Full Preview allows you to preview render without any preview overrides. It is essentially the same as 3ds Max’s built-in Iterative Rendering Mode — it renders the current frame without saving an output file.
Use this for a final check with production settings before doing a local render or network submission.
Render
Previously renderStacks had its own buttons for Local/Net Render and Seq Preview, which were also available in the Sanity Check. Now, the main UI only has a Render button that opens the Sanity Check dialog. You can render or seq preview from the dialog.
When the sanity check finds problems, it will show them in the dialog. Yellow items are skippable warnings. Red items must be fixed — for example, if the render output drive does not exist, it will block render/submission.
Local Render / Network Submission with Preview Setting
If you want to render a sequence with rsPrvRender settings, you can use the “Local Seq Preview” button and “Net Seq Preview”. Pressing these buttons activates the pass and applies rsPrvRender settings to the render state.
Local Render
Allows you to render passes locally. Select passes, press Local Render, and go home.
Generate Batch
You can generate a batch file for local rendering instead of rendering in the current session. It will launch 3dsmaxbatch and render the selected passes. Since it uses 3dsmaxbatch, it only supports 3ds Max 2018.4 and above.
If you run this function, a .bat and .ms file will be generated in the same folder as the max file. The file name will be <maxfilename>_YEAR_DATE_TIME. Run the .bat file to start 3dsmaxbatch and render.
This is a sample of the generated .bat file:
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max 2023\3dsmaxbatch.exe" "D:\prj\home\rstck\001\work\007_050\model\simpleMany\max\rsRender_rstck_001_007_050-model_simpleMany_v002_2022_1231_111458.ms" -v 5 -listenerlog "D:\prj\home\rstck\001\work\007_050\model\simpleMany\max\rsRender_rstck_001_007_050-model_simpleMany_v002_2022_1231_111458.log" -dm true -sceneFile "D:\prj\home\rstck\001\work\007_050\model\simpleMany\max\rstck_001_007_050-model_simpleMany_v002.max"
- renderStacks will automatically save the current max file before generating the batch file.
- The commands for all selected passes will be written to the batch file.
Net Render
Allows you to submit renders to your render farm. Deadline, BackBurner, Royal Render, Tractor and RenderFlow are supported. To use this feature, you must add exactly one network render pmodifier to the pass.
When no network render pmodifier is assigned to the pass, the Net Render and Net Seq Preview buttons will display “Net Render Mgr Missing” instead of being silently disabled.
