Render layers not picking up Indirect bounce lighting

[jmollot]

Hi everybody, There is a discrepancy in the lighting between my comped render layers and my master beauty (with no layers), and I believe this issue is related to the render layers not picking up "each other's" bounce lighting. The render layers comped together produce an image with areas that have exaggerated dark regions compared to if I render a master beauty of the scene. I imagine this is because each layer just has its respective geo solo'd along with the lights. You can see this difference in the images I've attached. How can I address this? Make an indirect lighting layer that I can comp onto the scene? Seems like this is an issue that shouldn't be occurring.

[halfstone]

If there is geometry that is creating secondary light bounces, you need to include that geometry in the layer.  You'd need to put it in a collection and create a layer override, turning off the primary visibility (and probably the shadows and maybe some other attributes that you don't want seen), but making sure that it is set to "visible in reflections".  I'm not sitting in front of Maya right now so I can't say exactly - but there may be other attributes that would include this geometry for the purpose of light bounces only in your layer.

[jmollot]

Does this mean I have to turn off primary visibility for the hundreds of geo shapes in my scene? I thought about this and tried overriding General “visibility” but that seems to turn off everything So it seems I would have to turn off primary visibility individually for every object in the environment? Or maybe I could make a render layer with only bounce lighting? Is that possible?

[halfstone · Accepted solution]

Inside a given render layer you would create a "collection" - these are objects that would have the same render overrides.  You can select all the objects in the scene or in the outliner and add their shapes to a collection all at once.  You can then select any shape in the collection and apply the override once, and it will apply to the whole collection.  Check the docs for the specifics - I'm writing this answer from memory without the software in front of me.

[jmollot]

Thank you!