Fstorm render

[peteristrate]

Honestly what to take of it is that well fstorm is really nice to use and the tonnemapping saves alot of post processing work, i have been testing it and getting really nice images without the need for any photoshop at all. It has also made me look more into gpu rendering, so far i have not been able to get good performance from vray rt but with my crappy card its working better with fstorm, idk why it just is, but as for gpu rendering, i just like the fact that graphics cards are nicely priced these days and getting more affordable and powerful and i can simply buy a new card and stick it in and have double, tripple or in my case 5 times the power of one card without the need for a new pc and expensive costs. before i was stuck with just using the cpu rendering and not paying any much attention to gpu rendering but i am now looking to get a few 1080 and soon the ti versions when they drop for use with gpu rendering with vray and fstorm. Here are two images i recently worked on in my spare time as practice, only chromatic aberation was added in photoshop and an lut was use in fstorm and at 20 percent strength which is nice to be able to blend in the lut with the original image which we need in vray. All these engines are powerful even the young fstorm but it misses alot of features but its very usable at the moment and i think as time goes by all these engines will end up on the same level one day. So for the near future Vray is stil king but new kids on the block have fresh blood and have been getting alot of attention

Yes, Vray could benefit from a simplified interface.
When I work with Vray, I feel like a hacker: tons of windows open: from the lights and camera settings to the console and render settings, because it seems you're in a constant need to adjusting all things.
When you work with Fstorm, once you've set up you settings in render settings, all you need is the render window.
I know, what I'm saying here has no substance, so not sure fi this is a real feeback since i'm not pointing at anything specifically, but that's just how it feels.

And Vray's render settings could be simpler.
I'm an avid of all those advanced settings, and I might enjoy dwelving into them, but most artists can't stand that.
It took me several days just to test every single setting in RT(also check if they wrok/are supported or not in RT) in various simple or more complex scenes, to come out with the best settings combination. Now I saved that preset and things run extremely fast, like 3 times faster than Fstorm or Octane.
So, when set up properly, Vray is a killer (fostorm/octane users' argument is that "scanline is even faster, but quality is what matters" - which is a legitimate view).

And, yes, I know you have the option to use Default / Advanced / Expert modes, but you still tend to use the expert mode because you think you can find out the ideal solution to best settings in the world.

So, I would do the following for VrayRT:
1. remove Authorisation and About rollouts (move them to a separate tab). You don't want to see all those unecessary things when you work with setting up your scene.
2. Remove all settings that are related to VrayAdvanced and strictly keep those that only affect VrayRT.
3. Global Illumination: not sure if Ambient Occlusion or Multipliers for Primary/Secondary engine or Saturation/contrast/contrast base are still relevant to RT or if anyone is using them.
4. LightCache: Keep subdivs, but Sample size and Scale(world/screen modes), not really. Remove all other prefilter, leak prevention, interp samples, etc.
Although, this is an interesting case because LC screen is way slower than LC world. LC screen is just as low as Fstorm, Octane. The only way to get a fast render is using LC world, and with that, you get a faulty GI solution as well. Not sure hot to get things perfect here. One thing is for sure: you don't get GI splotches and stuff in Octane/Fstorm, and the rendering speed is comparable with Vray's. So, they've found some sort of universal formula here.
5. Environment: is this relevant to RT anymore ?
6. Camera: You have the camera settings in camera properties. Never used these here in render settings. Those are, probably, if you want to set up your perspective view.
7. Defautl displacement: remove this. Keep all displacement settings in displacement modifier or Material displacement.
8. System: defautl geometry(static, dynamic, auto). Just remove this - make it Auto anyway.
9. Texture options: remove this - make it 0 so the required memory size will be autodetected.

[peteristrate]

MagicBullet had some good filters, but I don't think many people used them. There are PS actions that can do this, but again, we don't use them. Sometimes we fall into the pattern of wanting things that we really don't need. We are like kids that want the latest game. Life would be so good if we had just one more thing, but in actuality, we'll never be happy chasing that.

Yes, if you use this software, and that software and another 10 softwares, you will be able to get the same results. Great.
All those softwares cost money, you know ?

And, the most important thing is that groing from one software to another, you lose interactivity and you are prone to a lot of human error when you adjust all things manually in this software then in that software, etc. You also lose a lot of time.
In Fstorm, you've got all things in one place, and your image can be rendered straight as final.

[mitviz]

I have tried converting my last coupe project to FStorm, but I never got it to work. I am sure it something that I am missing, but who has the time?

i have been converting scenes myself, its really nice how it converts actually, and the interactive part is the best to see things update in realtime with no real issues, using it now on a project and ordering a 1080 card and then maybe a few more

[peteristrate]

And trust me, when that day comes, you will be complaining how complicated they've become and how the new kids on the block are so much better

Best regards,
Vlado

Indeed, but they're catching up fast.
10-20 features implemented in a matter of days or a week: from Depth of Field focus picker(in the VFB) to new bump (that works perfectly) and newe glare, flakes material and many others.

[peteristrate]

Which of the three or four different flavors of filmic tone mapping do you have in mind?

Best regards,
Vlado

There's a nice implementation here: https://corona-renderer.com/forum/in...ic,1807.0.html
You can see that in the first post, at the top:
- Corona highlight compression is just the classic Reinhard burn value. Vray already has that.
- Filmic tonemapping: not sure which 3 version of filmic tonemapping you say. It looks like there is a specific filmic curve that can be adjusted with the help of a few sliders: each slider adjusting different parts of the curve. I've been trying to emulate that manually, with custom curves in VFB, but that's just pure guessing and not accurate at all because doing it manually is not relistically precise at all.

[peteristrate]

But you can already do that!? What else do you want? There are already exposure and burn values in the VFB and you can save a .cube file out in the latest two SPs.

Best regards,
Vlado

Yes, it works now. I love it !!

[vlado]

Indeed, but they're catching up fast.

<shrug>Everything is very fast at the beginning when the code is small. They still have tricky features like light include/exclude lists, render elements, light select, hair/fur, Ornatrix/HairFarm support, particles, displacement, GLSL textures, sub-surface scattering, distributed rendering, UDIM textures, color by node attributes, actual layered materials, working deformation motion blur etc. Also, FStorm chose not to support any standard 3ds Max textures but to introduce their own set of textures for everything. If I had asked you to rework all your scenes with specific textures just so they work on the GPU, you guys would have grilled me...

Best regards,
Vlado

[peteristrate]

But you can already do that!? What else do you want? There are already exposure and burn values in the VFB and you can save a .cube file out in the latest two SPs.
Best regards,
Vlado

I've just got a strange behaviour.
It looks like the save LUT(.cube file) is not the same when I import it in Fusion with what you get in the VFB.
Check the 3 images attached.

As far as I have tested, the .cube file is not saving the gamma in it(if you have the sRGB button activated in the VFB), but just the Colour Corrections from the Corrections panel on the right hand side of the VFB. Which is fine.

- In the vfb.jpg, the image looks as it looks, as I have adjusted it. Only the exposure settings are activated(same was the .cube file exported).
- If you compare it against the fusion.jpg(the output of Fusion after I have added gamma and the LUT on top of it(the .cube file i exported from VFB), you get a different result.
- The Fusion composition is as simple as possible, as you can see in the fusion_comp.jpg - you see the 3 nodes: zzz.exr which is the 32bit linear render I imported, then I added the Gamma 2.2 on top of it(equivalent of the sRGB button in VFB). Up to this point, there's no difference between what I get in Fusion and what I get in the VFB. But then when I go to adding the LUT(the .cube file I exported from VFB), I get a different result... which leads me to think the .cube file is not exported correctly from VFB(I've made sure there are no other Fusion options selected that could alter the .cube file). Could you have a look at how the .cube file is exported ?

[vlado]

Can you post both the LUT file and the VFB color correction file (*.vccglb)? This works fine for me generally.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morne]

What if you bypass adding the gamma node, but instead, enable the viewport lut (Fusion View Lut), then edit it an set it the Color Gamma to 2.2. Essentially the same thing, but just give it a test.
Now add the lut node with the cube file from the vfb (basically skipping the gamma node)

[glorybound]

Has anyone created a LUT file that mimics what FStorm is doing by default? If FStorm is applying some kind of curve or color correction that is liked, can't we just create a LUT file to match it?

[peteristrate]

Has anyone created a LUT file that mimics what FStorm is doing by default? If FStorm is applying some kind of curve or color correction that is liked, can't we just create a LUT file to match it?

I thought about this and tried it. Failed every single time. I managed to get something close, but nothing to my liking.
As I mentioned, you could technically do that, manually, using curves or other adjustments in the VFB.
Practically, it's impossible to achieve the same exact effect since you can't have much accuracy manually and you don't know what to change exactly either... because these are phisically accurate things that can only be precisely generated by the engine itself.

[dlparisi]

I've just got a strange behaviour.
It looks like the save LUT(.cube file) is not the same when I import it in Fusion with what you get in the VFB.
Check the 3 images attached.

It seems to work just fine for me but only if you reverse the Gamma and LUT nodes. I assume the LUT has to be applied to the linear image.

[kosso_olli]

8. System: defautl geometry(static, dynamic, auto). Just remove this - make it Auto anyway.

Don't make wrong assumptions that your workflow matches the one from other artists. I often switch to static mode with Vray Displacement modifier, because I have tons of RAM to use. That way the displacement is rendering much quicker. To be honest I am quite glad that I can decide to look under the hood of Vray or to drive it in auto-mode.

[Morne]

It seems to work just fine for me but only if you reverse the Gamma and LUT nodes. I assume the LUT has to be applied to the linear image.

Why are you guys adding a gamma node? Just enable Fusion's viewport LUT and edit it to 2.2