The Extra Texture Render Element renders the entire scene with one texture mapped onto all objects in the scene. The texture applied to the scene can be a bitmap or a procedural texture such as VRayDirt or VRayCurvature.

A common use for VRayExtraTex is to use VRayDirt as the texture, which creates an ambient occlusion element for use in the composite. In this way, ambient occlusion can be controlled separately during the compositing process.

While you can obtain a result similar to the VRayExtraTex render element by applying the same texture to all objects in the scene and rendering, as usual, such an approach requires additional time spent on reverting to actual materials, saving different versions of the scene, etc. The VRayExtraTex render element provides you with a quick and easy way to render the scene with a single texture without the extra work.

This render element is enabled through the Render Elements tab of the Render Setup window in 3ds Max and displays its parameters in a rollout at the bottom of the window:

VRayVFB – When enabled, the render element appears in the V-Ray Virtual Frame Buffer.

Deep output – Specifies whether to include this render element in deep images.

Auto update name – Automatically names the render element with the texture name.

Texture – The texture to apply to the scene. Click to select the texture, or drag it from the Material Editor to this slot.

Background color – The specified color is used for background in the VRayExtraTex render channel.

Consider for antialiasing – When enabled, antialiasing is considered where possible.

Affect matte objects – Sets whether to include matte objects when generating the render element. A matte object is an object that has been assigned a Wrapper Material with the Matte surface option enabled.

Force 32 bit output – When enabled, stores the Extra Texture render element as a 32-bit float even when writing a 16-bit raw image. This option applies only to multichannel .exr files.

Force lossless compression – When enabled, lossy DWAA/DWAB compression is not applied to the VRayExtraTex data stored in a multichannel exr.

Exclude – Opens up a dialog where objects can be included or excluded from receiving the texture.