Fstorm render

[LudvikKoutny]

I really wouldn't say V-Ray in its current state is not photoreal. I'd actually say the opposite.

The difference lies in just a small bunch of different default values, and a bunch of features that have not been refined yet. But the thing is that while these differences won't make images of inexperienced people (or people with bad taste) look better, it will help those, that are experienced good artists, just do not invest much time into digging into technical stuff and browsing forums to find hidden tips and tricks.

Honestly, I think that when it comes to achieving ultimate photorealism... every single effect that puts together a real photograph is equally as important. Historical progress of rendering development has led us to a false impression that there is order of importance when it comes to how much shading and lighting effects impact resulting photorealism of an image.

For example we think that true area lights instead of sharp point lights with shadows are more important than having GI, that having diffuse GI is more important than having caustics, that proper raytraced glossy reflections are more important than correct fresnel reflection falloff, etc...

So then we tend to think, that for example disabling casting shadows on a random small object in our scene will be a disaster, where as having a missing glare star on a directly visible sun disc is just a minor thing. Or that if we do not make some material to be correctly reflective, it will draw attention a lot more than a missing caustic.
Or when you have only 2 bounce Global illumination, it often doesn't matter anyway, because many people usually abuse the hell out of a contrast button in post process phase anyway, so they will make even 25bounce GI like 1 bounce after the adjustment, where as if you miss a glow around overexposed window, your eye will pick up on that more likely.

Well, I think that human eye will pick up all these missing things equally, that sharp caustics are as important part of the light light transport as basic shadows, and that glares and glints are equally as important as materials having reflections and so on. Only when you have all of the puzzle pieces at your disposal can you put together entire picture, and more of the pieces you have, the closer to the entire picture you are.

I bet you that if you take any scene, and do a version A, where you will do really poor rushed job on shading and lighting, but then do a great job on post processing and secondary optical effects (glow, glare, vignette, aberration) and then do version B, where you spend a bit more time getting shading and lighting right, but won't do any post processing work at all, if you look at both images side by side without spending too much time staring at them, you won't really think one looks significantly closer to photo than the other one. They will both have something about them, but none of them will convince you even for a second it's a photograph

[jstrob]

You've no idea how very depressing that sounds All that work to make sure GI, lighting, materials, reflections etc are all accurate and fast don't matter, but apparently what matters is a bit of lens effects and tone mapping. That's life, I guess
Vlado

Don't forget that we have only seen simple archviz or product scenes so far from fstorm (no displacement, hair, volume etc). And the reason is that it just can't do anything else for now and will probably take years before it can do something else. It is not just a detail that matter most, it takes all the details put together and then you get photorealism. I'm sure chaosgroup can add a small detail or 2 that fstorm has and stay the king of renderer!

Why GGX is not the default BRDF by the way?

[vlado]

So photoreal on the vray side means implementing two things perhaps - better glow / glare / bloom and then some photographic tone curves.

You've no idea how very depressing that sounds All that work to make sure GI, lighting, materials, reflections etc are all accurate and fast don't matter, but apparently what matters is a bit of lens effects and tone mapping. That's life, I guess

The hard part of it is going to be getting the artists making the scenes to make photorealistic scenes in terms of their lighting, materials and camera settings - tone curves and glow on a render that's using unrealistic ingredients will only give you a slightly different looking unrealistic render, it's not going to be the part of the process that makes the biggest difference.

That's what I've been trying to tell you guys - no amount of glare or color grading will turn a badly set up scene into a masterpiece... V-Ray is mostly set up for photoreal rendering by default, but it still amazes me how people manage to purposefully get flat and uninteresting renders through wrongly placed bounce cards, additional hidden ambient lights etc.

The twitch stream thing is a great idea though!

It's an interesting idea, but how would that be different from the forum (other than being live, obviously)? Here at least we have time to think through the replies and provide some kind of factual proof for various statements, which is not possible in a live session.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Moriah]

But only 2-3 days ago fstorm included LUT support...

[jstrob]

What's wrong with Glow in V-Ray ? I'm not using it much to be honest but didn't find it lacking anything. Just curious what's the story with it.

Two things I would like to have in V-Ray:

1. Additional tone mapping as I find Reinhard to be good but I would like to have other options as well.
For some time I use filmic tonemapping in Nuke and I'm happy with results:
http://www.dabarti.com/screens/s3d8c...c8274b396t.png vs Rainhard: http://www.dabarti.com/screens/s5a05...704b809203.png and vs linear http://www.dabarti.com/screens/s8598...b3717cf42G.png

While having that in VFB, I would probably don't color grade so much in Nuke / AE. We don't add motion blur or DOF anymore in post due as it's faster and better to render it in RT.

2. As I you still have to be able to correctly compose the shot I would prefer if V-Ray wouldn't bake the color grading into RGB_color while saving to separate elements, instead save it as separate file like RGB_color_VFB or do it other way around (to not break current workflows) - bake grading to RGB_color but save pass RGB_color_ungraded as well.

Best,
Tomasz Wyszolmirski

I think your 3 images shows exactly why the fstrom facebook group has so many photoreal renders. The look up table. I know it is something that should be more in comp. but if we can see it directly in V-Ray frame buffer that's even better. In fact maybe we can I just didn't know really much about LUT before discovering fstorm.

Also very good idea to have more options to output with and without the baked color grading. And it was brought before but also some elements like multimatte and zdepth should never be color graded anyway.

[jstrob]

I have yet to really experience the benefits of RT. I upgraded my video card, thinking I could start to use it, but that just hasn't happened. When I tested FStorm, it just worked, so I get that. Yes, the images are good, but not any better than anything else, or are you saying you think that they are?

yes they are. I'm now sure of it. And i have a better idea why also. Better glare, look up tables and better default settings (GGX, maybe something in the glass). There is something in the shadows, the reflection the glass that is a bit more photoreal by default at least. And it is probably all linked to the look up table and glare being more photoreal. Even in post with expensive filters I can't think of any glow or glare effect that can easily look as photoreal as the fstorm one.

[wyszolmirski]

What's wrong with Glow in V-Ray ? I'm not using it much to be honest but didn't find it lacking anything. Just curious what's the story with it.

Two things I would like to have in V-Ray:

1. Additional tone mapping as I find Reinhard to be good but I would like to have other options as well.
For some time I use filmic tonemapping in Nuke and I'm happy with results:
http://www.dabarti.com/screens/s3d8c...c8274b396t.png vs Rainhard: http://www.dabarti.com/screens/s5a05...704b809203.png and vs linear http://www.dabarti.com/screens/s8598...b3717cf42G.png

While having that in VFB, I would probably don't color grade so much in Nuke / AE. We don't add motion blur or DOF anymore in post due as it's faster and better to render it in RT.

2. As you still have to be able to correctly compose the shot I would prefer if V-Ray wouldn't bake the color grading into RGB_color while saving to separate elements, instead save it as separate file like RGB_color_VFB or do it other way around (to not break current workflows) - bake grading to RGB_color but save pass RGB_color_ungraded as well.

Best,
Tomasz Wyszolmirski

[joconnell]

Cool!

So photoreal on the vray side means implementing two things perhaps - better glow / glare / bloom and then some photographic tone curves. The hard part of it is going to be getting the artists making the scenes to make photorealistic scenes in terms of their lighting, materials and camera settings - tone curves and glow on a render that's using unrealistic ingredients will only give you a slightly different looking unrealistic render, it's not going to be the part of the process that makes the biggest difference.

The twitch stream thing is a great idea though!

[mitviz]

I think majority of users i know just want a photoreal image and to see the render on the screen as it might look when shot from a camera, when it comes to RT and gpu, idk what you guys are using inhouse in your side but RT is slow man on my side n from what i read many other peoples side, maybe its how the images clears up? Idk from corona to Fstorm just seems faster and better, can chaosgroup have a once a month twitch session so we can bug you guys like for an hour or two?

[joconnell]

Well, I can get you a LUT, if that will help...

Best regards,
Vlado

Might be worth something like one of the recent short videos on how you can set up vray to do similar things if it's going to be the final destination of your render? If you're unconcerned with what it's doing under the hood and only care about getting the "prettiest" picture at the end of it (pretty being subjective) then some luts might be useful for some folks?

[wyszolmirski]

I love GPU rendering and all the goodies it brings to the table. After I've seen some statements that FStorm is very fast it made me curious. I tested and it isn't faster than RT. In my opinion the best thing about it is that it forces users to actually render on GPU and see how interactive setup and fast feedback can help in day to day work. This doesn't mean you cannot do the same with RT.

ps. After seeing over years how V-Ray's development goes I am very confident that if there is any aspect of FStorm that performs better, V-Ray will soon match or outperform it.

[vlado]

Well, I can get you a LUT, if that will help...

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

I wonder is part of the effect of doing anything that changes an image from the norm? Like a standard photo of real life is kind of dull and automatically looks more appealing when you put some contrast on it. Better again when you put some kind of grade that drags it slightly away from real life or puts a bit of a "style" on it. It's similar to the way that people look at black and white, shallow focus or strange angle photography - it's a view that they don't normally get with their eye so they regard it a bit higher?

The other thing is that vray renders linearly. Nuke is linear too. Film cameras have a slight roll off in their shadows and highlights so they've a slight s-curve with varying mid tones. Digital cameras are linear sensors by default but the manufacturers know that linear is kind of factual and dull and it also doesn't look like film cameras so they've added on their own tone curves to the processing to try and replicate the non-linear toe and shoulder of film. Vray's renders are linear out of the box which is a far better starting point if you're going to go into comp afterwards. Fstorms definitely aren't, they're trying to mimic a photographic response in the frame buffer which would be unhelpful if you were to try and work with render elements in nuke afterwards but if your final deliverable is the result of the fstorm frame buffer then great!

It'd be almost worth getting a texture of a stepped greyscale value and macbeth chart exposed under the same light intensity in fstorm and vray just to see what it's doing.

[kosso_olli]

I've heard the same arguments so many times now, Stanley - for Maxwell, then Octane, then iray, then Corona, now FStorm, and tomorrow it will be something else. FStorm looks like a good renderer and Karba seems very dedicated; also using a new renderer can be very refreshing, especially if you've been staring at V-Ray for 10 years. All this is totally fine, but I don't really agree that FStorm is particularly easier or intrinsically more photoreal than V-Ray. In fact, your V-Ray knowledge probably helps a lot when using FStorm too. But if a bit of contrast and highlight burn make you perceive renders as more photoreal, I've got really nothing more to say...

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

I've heard the same arguments so many times now, Stanley - for Maxwell, then Octane, then iray, then Corona, now FStorm, and tomorrow it will be something else. FStorm looks like a good renderer and Karba seems very dedicated; also using a new renderer can be very refreshing, especially if you've been staring at V-Ray for 10 years. All this is totally fine, but I don't really agree that FStorm is particularly easier or intrinsically more photoreal than V-Ray. In fact, your V-Ray knowledge probably helps a lot when using FStorm too. But if a bit of contrast and highlight burn make you perceive renders as more photoreal, I've got really nothing more to say...

Best regards,
Vlado