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RenderPassManager Important Concepts
There are some points about the way RPManager operates that are important to understand.
A Render Pass is a set of parameters relating to your scene file that defines how 3dsmax will render that scene file. These parameters can include which camera to render from, what objects are visible in the scene, what properties/modifiers/materials are assigned to those objects, which xrefs are loaded, what environment effects are active, render effects that are active, output path, resolution, etc. Through the RPM interface you can create multiple passes, and define the settings for each pass, and then submit one or more of these passes to a render manager, or process locally.
Each Pass must have a camera assigned to it, non-camera perspective views are not supported. The same camera can be used for all passes, or each pass can have it's own camera assigned.
Visibility of objects in the scene can optionally be controlled per pass - and in typical use will nearly always be controlled per pass - and can be be managed by RPM sets, Layers, Layer Sets, State Sets, Scene States, Named Selection Sets, and scripted calls.
There are 3 ways to render through RPM: a preview render of one or more passes, a local render, or via network submission. Buttons to render in any of these ways are always visible in the RPM UI, as is the main pass list.
Preview overrides allow you to reduce the settings for your preview renders - ie resolution, render parameters (AA, GI settings, etc) - for much faster feedback while setting up scenes.
RPM allows you to manage multiple passes, and also edit multiple passes simultaneously: there are some limitations to the display of the parameters when multiple passes are selected.
3rd Party renderer support:
3rd party renderers are supported by RPManager. Vray is a very popular renderer used with RPManager, and the integration is tight, with specific controls for caching passes and managing the vray frame buffer output.
Network Submission:
RPManager supports multiple rendering managers, from Backburner that comes free with 3dsmax to Thinkbox's Deadline - there is support for loading external scripted network submissions so you can go as far as writing your own submitter for RPM (for example the Deadline support is via external scripts maintained by Thinkbox).