The Object Layer Node provides parameters that including parameters to control the object’s baking settings. This also includes other parameters to control both the object and the shadows it casts on other geometry. This provides a way for users to modify the object visibility directly in the viewport at render time (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Object layer parameters in the Node Inspector
Render Layer ID
This specifies which layer the object will be placed. The value provided assigns the object to the corresponding render layer, this is the first render layer by default.
General visibility
This controls the level of visibility for both the object and its shadow.
Camera Visibility
The Camera Visibility parameter takes a boolean value to specify whether the object is visible to the camera. This is enabled by default.
Shadow Visibility
The Shadow Visibility parameter takes a boolean value to specify whether the shadow cast by the object is visible to the camera. This is enabled by default.
Random Color Seed
This specifies the start point to initialize the color after which random colors are generated. This is zero by default when random colors are currently not in use.
Color
This is the color that is used for the assigned object when it is rendered in the object render layer pass.
Baking Group ID
This specifies which baking group the object belongs to. The value provided assigns the object to the corresponding baking, this is the first baking group by default.
Baking UV Transform
This tells the Baking Camera how to project the UV sets of the object layer affecting the way the UVs from that object layer are projected into the UV space when rendered using the baking camera. The value specified as baking UV transform will be used by the baking camera to place all UVs that belong to the geometry in that object layer in the UV space. This allows users to be able to bake entire scene light-maps, including all render passes in one single render without any additional compositing.
In some cases, when a geometry object is imported into the Standalone Edition, an Object Layer may already present.
In cases where the geometry is imported has no Object Layer present, the Object Layer can be set up by creating an Object Layer Map which allows the parameters of the Object Layer to be mapped to the geometry object. The Object Layer Map must first be connected to the Geometry node as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: An object layer map node connects the geometry with the Object Layer node
The Object Layer node can be accessed by right-clicking in the Nodegraph Editor and choosing Object Layer (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Object layer nodes are created using the pop-up menu in the node graph
The Object Layer Map node can be accessed by right-clicking in the Nodegraph Editor and navigating to the Geometry category then choosing Object Layer Map.
Figure 4: Object layer map nodes are created using the pop-up menu in the node graph