Fstorm render

[Mnietek2707]

Attached is a .bcurve file for the V-Ray VFB curve control and .cube file for the LUT control (for the LUT, please turn off the "Convert to Log Space" option.

The curve is more accurate, although I'm still doing some adjustments there for the darker colors.

Best regards,
Vlado

Could someone help me with using this .cube file in Fusion?
I get error: "FileLUT1 failed at time 0"
___
sorry for my English

[jstrob]

Alex_M it appears the sun is darker in vray render, otherwise they look very close. In fstorm the refraction is incorrect on the glass.

When converting with fstorm converter, the index of refraction may be changed, I think it just take the default one which is different form the vray default one. If you put the same ior it will look the same.

[Morbid Angel]

Alex_M it appears the sun is darker in vray render, otherwise they look very close. In fstorm the refraction is incorrect on the glass.

[Alex_M]

I just saw this thread. I must say I'm really impressed with this little renderer. I played a bit with it too and it is very fun to use. Even if not mature enough it is still producing some very nice images. I agree with some people here that Vray can benefit from some improvements in tone mapping and glare. The tone mapping in fstorm looks very natural, almost like a real-world camera and the glare is very fast for it's quality (it appears it's GPU accelerated?).

Here's my first try with it. It's a job I did with Vray a while ago. I haven't changed the materials/lights manually, I just used the converter fstorm ships with. It did a pretty good job. I let it render at 1024 x 684 on my GTX 980 for 1:30 min. and stopped it. No Photoshopping, just the raw render directly out of the frame buffer. There's something about that renderer that gives a very natural feel to the colors/lighting.



And here's compared to Vray that I let run for 1:30 min on my I7 4930k overclocked at 4.4 Ghz, raw render again. I just color corrected it in the VFB to match the tone mapping of fstorm. Render settings are: Progressive 1/100 subd, BF+LC (800 subd), Probabilistic lights OFF, Min. shading rate 6, Max ray int. 20, Refl/Refr depth 20, Subpix. mapping OFF, Clamp output OFF, Use Embree ON:

[stevesideas]

Yes, will see about that...

Best regards,
Vlado

This would be great !

[Vizioen]

Nice results! Mind sharing the presets for the filter generator tool or the generated HDR?

Sure. Here you go.

GlareTest_HDRI.zip

[kosso_olli]

Admittedly, it took my a while to get right, but that's actually because I've never used the filter generator tool before, but I got a result that is quite similar to your reference image.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32239[/ATTACH]

Nice results! Mind sharing the presets for the filter generator tool or the generated HDR?

[^Lele^]

Render with settings, and obstacle image (yeah, really.).



My picture was taken, clearly, inside a Plane, hence i had a few layers of severely scratched Plexiglas over my lens.
You are not reproducing anywhere near the same conditions for your lens effect, it would be really odd if it matched.

[Vizioen]

Admittedly, it took my a while to get right, but that's actually because I've never used the filter generator tool before, but I got a result that is quite similar to your reference image.



And these were some tests before your post. Without the lens effect generator tool;

[vlado]

And a resulting render from the frame buffer...

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

Here is some random screenshot of the filter generator. It's not very convenient that it's a separate tool and at some point we wanted to include it in the VFB itself.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

For F-Stop at 16, which is quite normal for daylight, it's hard to believe Vray's Glare is correct. Can't find a reference remotely similar to that. Am I approaching this case wrong? How to do it?

Well, the V-Ray glare is based on a particular paper that described how to derive the glare from the camera parameters. It is entirely possible that either the paper is not accurate or we implemented it wrongly... In retrospect, it might have been more straightforward to just ditch all of that and go for a more artistic approach like Octane and FStorm - it is probably worth to experiment with that.

There is also a standalone tool for generating glare images that comes with V-Ray; you can find it in the start menu > programs > Chaos Group > V-Ray for 3ds Max > Tools > Filter generator tool.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Midiaeffects]

And just for comparison. An Octane and FStorm version:

-Octane default settings:


-Just changed Blur size a bit gives a rather nice effect:



-FStorm at default settings:


-Changed Size and Blur a bit:


Reference Photo:

[snivlem]

An excellent V-Ray Project

https://www.behance.net/gallery/4163...-Nieuwe-School

This has that Corona and Fstorm "look" again, all just in the contrast and post processing....

[Midiaeffects]

Hey, thanks for the explanations Lele and Vlado. Very interesting to know that Bloom and Glare are completely different phenomena. I really appreciate it because clearly I don't know the physical causes of Glare and Bloom, so my requests are from an artistic point of view.

But I have to say I still struggle to believe VrayLensEffect is so accurate. I mean, let's look at the following examples using it on the sun of a daylight system: (camera settings: F-Stop 16, Shutter: 1/300, ISO:100)

-Glare at default settings. F-Number is at 16 to match camera ("from render camera" is not working). Lele, in your references Glare IS smooth, not when clipped by image boundaries of course, but still they neither form a perfect, harsh circle like this. Also, there's kind of a dirt between rays, which is why I say looks like Vray uses an internal bitmap, changing and distorting it, the effect doesn't look procedural. At defaults, it doesn't look good.


-Increasing glare size makes it look worse IMO. The spacing and the boundaries are very ugly.


-Even with size at 100, we still see the boundaries. The effect is very blurry and the spacing becomes very exaggerated.


-The effect simply doesn't look pretty or realistic in any way with F-Stop at 16. In the end I have to forget everything and play around until it looked nicer:



For F-Stop at 16, which is quite normal for daylight, it's hard to believe Vray's Glare is correct. Can't find a reference remotely similar to that. Am I approaching this case wrong? How to do it?