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Using the Cycles Render Engine How can I make an object invisible when I render?

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    $\begingroup$ possible duplicate: Making an Invisible Material in the Cycles render engine $\endgroup$ – David Mar 2 '16 at 23:24
  • $\begingroup$ @David I did look at that question and thought of adding into it, but the question is about animating the disappearance of an object it made no sense... $\endgroup$ – user1853 Mar 3 '16 at 0:57
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These are some of the options to make an object not render in Cycles.

To make the object invisible/unrenderable

  • Disable the object for rendering (turn off the camera icon)

    enter image description here

  • Move the object you don't want to a layer that is not renderable

    enter image description here

  • Give it a transparent shader:

    enter image description here

To make the object invisible to camera but keep the shadows and interaction with other objects (reflections, etc)

  • Restrict the visibility for camera:

    enter image description here

  • Using Nodes: use a light path so the object is invisible to the camera only:

    enter image description here

To make the object transparent as alpha channel:

  • use a holdout shader so it renders as transparent

    enter image description here

  • Place the object on a different layer and use that layer as mask:

    enter image description here

  • Use a Pass index for the object and use that on the compositor to subtract the object from the final render:

    enter image description here (click on the image to enlarge)

  • Similarly, you can assign a pass index to the material and use that as alpha on the compositor:

    enter image description here (click on the image to enlarge)

For the last three options the Transparent Background option has to be enabled:

enter image description here

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    $\begingroup$ +1, I like. However, I don't understand why you said that Transparent has to be selected. It worked for me without that enabled. $\endgroup$ – bertmoog Jun 30 '17 at 2:05

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