The Nexus is an artist-friendly and production-proven render pass system for Maya and Mental Ray developed in-house at Luma Pictures.


Character render using Nexus shader for Underworld: Evolution. © Luma Pictures

Pass rendering involves writing out multiple images per rendered frame which are combined in a compositing application. Pass rendering
increases the flexibility of a composite and reduces the amount of expensive re-rendering that is required. Unlike maya's render layer system,
which performs a separate render for each layer, the Nexus writes out all of its passes during the same render, which drastically reduces the
overall render time.