Fstorm render

[Neilg]

You'd be surprised at how many people just do their job, not following forums, news or anything until a colleague comes up and says "look at this cool new thing"

And i've worked with people who when this happens, say 'the old way works fine, i'm not using that'
The number of people who actually stay on top of this is a near microscopic sample of all people who work with 3d software

[vlado]

Sometimes I feel most users here just sleep and miss some very important updates.

You'd be surprised at how many people just do their job, not following forums, news or anything until a colleague comes up and says "look at this cool new thing" Until it becomes an old thing and works well enough that they don't need to constantly look for updates... At which point someone comes along with the next new thing and so on

Best regards,
Vlado

[joconnell]

Well I guess it depends on the industry, depends on the studio. I nor anyone I've worked with has ever handed over raw renders to someone to work on, but then I dont work in vfx but arch vis. TBH in my time, ive only ever worked with a couple of people that spend more than 10 mins doing post work, just isn't the time available. Projects only last 4-5 days, a week if you're lucky.
It has to look good straight out of Vray, so, working lens fx etc are super important to me and everyone else I work with. I only spend about 30secs in lightroom on each image.

Yep, and some people don't even wait for a nice render to come out

Luxigon pretty much take the very first thing that comes out of vray and go right into photoshop with it so there's a tonne of variety in people's needs!

[kosso_olli]

They may have 5 years old CPU but Titan GPU in their machine, then they run Fstorm next to V-Ray and conclude Fstorm is way faster, despite comparison conditions being completely off.

That's another thing I don't understand. Since 3.2 Vray has become extremely easy to set up. Since then I barely touched settings from Default, and results are quick and good. Also since then RT GPU made a huge leap forward. As can be seen from my comparison, it is way better in terms of quality for a given time frame, and that is with BF/BF, not using Light Cache. Sometimes I feel most users here just sleep and miss some very important updates. Things are getting better, constantly.

[LudvikKoutny]

Take a look at the fStorm Facebook-Group. There are loads of images, both from experienced users and novices. The quality of the images ranges from crappy renders from beginners to top notch from high end guys. Just about the same with every engine, Vray no exception. I have yet to see the real benefit of all this, except for Glare as I explained.

Sure that it's not a "make pretty image" button, and it won't save complete newbies. I am just trying to answer your question what all the fuss is about

People simply view it as a means of getting to a certain quality level at the less expenses in terms of gaining knowledge about the software. Both me and you know V-Ray in depth and know where to go and what to turn on to make our renders look good and perform well. We know there are numerous BRDFs to choose from, we know what is the difference between tone mapped and linear image and what tone mapping does to the image. We also know that V-Ray's lensFX is not really good for final frame rendering, or that there is a very tiny button at the bottom left of VFB which will open you a panel with tons of tone mapping options.

BUT...

New users, even experienced ones, just migrating from different renderer/package, or even users who just don't like to get into technical things do not know it. They won't switch BRDF, they will just do renders with default VrayMTL settings and Fstorm side to side, and conclude there is something about Fstorm shading they like more. Same with tonemapping... We know we can open VFB panel, load some good looking lut, tone down highlight burn and boost contrast a little bit, but they don't. They will render default linear image in Vray, compare it side by side to Fstorm one, and conclude they like Fstorm one more. And same could be said by performance. Average guy just won't know that nVidia's 100* faster on GPU propaganda is BS. They may have 5 years old CPU but Titan GPU in their machine, then they run Fstorm next to V-Ray and conclude Fstorm is way faster, despite comparison conditions being completely off.

So yeah It's just that I can understand what the appeal is. I can't count how many times I've already watched some gumroad tutorials of artists I admire, and found out they seem to lack a lot of experience in technical area, yet they more than compensate for it by their persistent patience, and sometimes also blissful ignorance... They simply choose a tool that's easiest for them to use, regardless of how efficient it actually is...

[AlexP]

I'd say a huge percent of people pass on images to another point to be worked on

Well I guess it depends on the industry, depends on the studio. I nor anyone I've worked with has ever handed over raw renders to someone to work on, but then I dont work in vfx but arch vis. TBH in my time, ive only ever worked with a couple of people that spend more than 10 mins doing post work, just isn't the time available. Projects only last 4-5 days, a week if you're lucky.
It has to look good straight out of Vray, so, working lens fx etc are super important to me and everyone else I work with. I only spend about 30secs in lightroom on each image.

[joconnell]

There is no such a thing as the Nikon or Canon look: people shoot the cleanest raw they possibly can, and choose cameras based on the inherent quality of their response, these days only differing between makers because of they way each goes about sensors, surely not because of a post tone operation :ie. maybe the primaries are slightly different in gamut shape, that's all. They ALL, unequivocally, aim at the closest possible RAW capture of light (AKA, in Rendering: LWF), and what stops them from achieving it is physics and technology (ie. it's a limit, not a choice.).

There's so a canon and nikon look

All of the sensors are just photon gathering sensors with a coloured fitler over the top for red, green and blue so they're inherently linear from the off. That of course doesn't look like film though as film use to have log curves in it's exposure. The dslr makers mimic this in the post processing of the raw files, they've got plenty of metadata in there first of all to take out any inconsistencies in each individual sensor from what should be correct and then second some colour science from the manufacturer to turn the flat linear data into what we'd consider a pleasant photo - not unlike what the tone curves and contrast of fstorm is doing to it's pixels. There's been wars started on forums about whether nikons or canons render nicer skin tones for example and likewise the red camera was almost unuseable in it's earlier generations as with every update of the camera firmware, the colour that came from the camera was completely different and required the DOP to relearn it and shoot brand new wedge tests to see how everything responded. Same linear photon collecting bayer sensors in the camera but a world of difference in what the developing software does to it when presenting a final image to the user!

You're totally right on the subjective nature of "I think this looks better" too - there's no accounting for taste and the final needs of the user - if they think the final image in the frame buffer is "pretty" (a subjective view) then hey, great for them, keep doing that - as for you as part of a software development team trying to ascertain what, if anything, is lacking then subjective opinions aren't exactly the easiest things to act upon

[kosso_olli]

it's not about what experienced people get out of Fstorm, but what inexperienced or not technically oriented people get out of it.

Take a look at the fStorm Facebook-Group. There are loads of images, both from experienced users and novices. The quality of the images ranges from crappy renders from beginners to top notch from high end guys. Just about the same with every engine, Vray no exception. I have yet to see the real benefit of all this, except for Glare as I explained.

[LudvikKoutny]

As I wrote a few pages back, it's not about what experienced people get out of Fstorm, but what inexperienced or not technically oriented people get out of it. If you compare just raw global illumination light transport on completely linear render with gray clay material then you will get pretty much same result out of 90% of renderers out there.

Using Fstorm is PITA especially because instead of supporting native Max's features, it clones everything into it's own features that have just fraction of functionality and worse UI, but even despite that, many people seem to love it. They love it simply because they can just setup materials, setup lighting and get nice results out of the box. They don't need to dig into some obscure deep rollout to enable good looking material BRDF, they often don't even know it's there. They don't need to spend time tweaking glare solution that works in an odd way, explore dozens of buttons in VFB to find LUT loader. They just walk around their scene in 3D and snap pictures with virtual camera.

Again, I am not saying Fstorm is better than V-Ray. I myself find it very unappealing, especially the way it's implemented in Max, and also that it has just average performance compared to other GPU renderes. But at the same time I understand the appeal it has for other, regular users.

Oh... and glass For some reason, to this day, I still can't get good looking glass out of V-Ray, even despite having reflect on backside enabled. I have no idea why, but V-Ray is the only rendere I just can't get crisp looking glass material out of :/

[^Lele^]

My attempts at figuring fStorm's internal CM out have proven fruitless (without CM active, i get seriously wonky LUTs out of it), while Vlado has made some inroad, apparently (see posts earlier).
Notice that the same method, used with V-Ray LWF and with fStorm's CMd output, produced valid LUTs, and only V-Ray's was identical to the control (ie. straight from the CMSPattern) one.
fStorms skewed it a wee bit with CM on, and killed it (again, just in my tests: Vlado managed something, going down another route.) when trying to render in LWF.

fStorm installs all its luts into the max root, under the LUT folder, so nothing stops people from loading those or, fearing copyright issues, reading the names and finding equivalent ones, but royalty free, online.

There is no such a thing as the Nikon or Canon look: people shoot the cleanest raw they possibly can, and choose cameras based on the inherent quality of their response, these days only differing between makers because of they way each goes about sensors, surely not because of a post tone operation :ie. maybe the primaries are slightly different in gamut shape, that's all. They ALL, unequivocally, aim at the closest possible RAW capture of light (AKA, in Rendering: LWF), and what stops them from achieving it is physics and technology (ie. it's a limit, not a choice.).

All the LUTs coming with fStorm are for old stock film, and the overwhelming majority has to be applied in Log space.
NONE works out of the box, and that's why they add a slider to blend them back: it's instagramming, and done wrong at that.
The fact one doesn't grasp what's going wrong (f.e. using a LUT on an image which doesn't reflect the CM the LUT was built upon, or applying a LUT in the wrong color space.) isn't cured by a blend slider, and it's genuinely not a behaviour I feel i can encourage (I scripted the LUT explorer begrudging the choice before even starting.).

If someone just once came up with actionable data, with a workflow showing the differences in a truly qualitative way ("I like this more" isn't quite cutting it. Nor is posting overcontrasted stuff with severely cut off GI, and calling it "real".), then maybe there could be a debate on what V-Ray ought to do better.

The ONLY thing so far of note is that V-Ray renders the correct lighting distribution, unerringly (like, say, Arnold, renderman, mental ray, Corona), while fStorm does not, repeatedly so, across all its releases so far (like, say, Octane, redshift, and most other GPU engines out there).
Now, that bit is exactly measurable, and if it was off, we'd have to fix it.
Or, we could tell you that it looks more photographic, turn glare on by default, and add the intensity the GI engine can't capture back as an overlay that way.
Notice this isn't a go at Karba: the guy's doing great, he's doing it alone, and I wouldn't know where to begin from at the same task.
It's expression of confusion at the priorities in people's minds, as i seem to gather from this thread, and others of similar tone: they mostly leave me at a loss for words, and even more so of productive ideas.
Luckily, me alone.

[joconnell]

Most people do not pass images on to anyone else to work on, well the ones i know anyway and just want the most realistic images possible and with the least amount of work so its what fstorm offers not comparing standard linear renders.

I'd say a huge percent of people pass on images to another point to be worked on, it's just far quicker to do a lot of things in 2d than to do a full re-render in 3d. Your point on some people wanting "the most realistic images possible and with the least amount of work" is totally valid though. Fstorm's defaults are making decisions on behalf of the artist and what'd happen is while I might like the look of the render, what it does to it would totally break my workflow by taking everything away from linear.

It's just the issue with vray being a general purpose renderer - you won't find one set of defaults or workflow that'll suit every user or industries needs

[mitviz]

i think that was the point, not to strip down and render and try to compare them with similar settings just as is out of the box, most people do not pass images on to anyone else to work on, well the ones i know anyway and just want the most realistic images possible and with the least amount of work so its what fstorm offers not comparing standard linear renders, and also i don't really think anyone is making a fuss about anything really, gpu rendering is not something alot of people are tackling right now anyway and is kind of new to alot of people, i can count the amount of people i know with a titan card and its about 1 and i know alot of people in my city and back home and they are all using vray and rendering so i think alot of people like myself learnt alot so far from this thread though. if very had say an option to do with fstorm does out of the box with gpu that would be really nice too

[joconnell]

Might also be worth putting in a vignetting option into the buffer cc controls!

[Morne]

Might be worth expanding on your vray luts and doing a small video on how you'd achieve this in vray lele? Even something like making a set of presets that can get loaded into the globals button of the frame buffer to mimic fstorm's response?

+1 for this Lele. Your vids are always very informative and fun

[joconnell]

That's kind of it though, Oliver disabled all the "tone mapping, contrast, vignetting and stuff" to make it more like a standard linear renderer (vray's default). Seems like the "photographicness" that people are liking about the default output of fstorm is all of this stuff which you can add in post if you want to, they're just assuming that a lot of it is the way fstorm is calculating it's lighting and shading instead of just colour correction bits after. Of course with me passing on all my renders to a comper I absolutely do NOT want any of this stuff on, but if you're looking for an image right out of the box it's closer to what would have come out of a dslr or film camera since both of them would have the tone mapping and canon / nikon "look" burnt into the image.

Might be worth expanding on your vray luts and doing a small video on how you'd achieve this in vray lele? Even something like making a set of presets that can get loaded into the globals button of the frame buffer to mimic fstorm's response?

If people want non linear images saved from the frame buffer and that suits their business model then why not let them have it