Getting that airy, light look for interiors

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Yep. Extreme shit, right?

[piotrus3333]

These two do the same thing. Reinhard tonemapping. Highlight compression is the preferred way now for various reasons (like lens effects).
This might be why Filmic tonemapping is not working for you - it was added as third tonemapper I guess. just pick one that works for you. your raw render just doesn’t look right - daylight should burn everything around the window, probably half of the frame should be white in vfb before corrections. than highlight compression slider will bring highlights to right levels and some contrast (with contrast or curves) will darken your shadows.
don’t use these LUTs - will just add confusion.

[piotrus3333]

basic tonemapping example. vrays default color mapping. disregard exposure adjustment, just badly exposed render.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Well the Reinhardt burn is already way down. Probably would be much brighter and burned out if not. I'm at total Chaos now so I can't check. Will do on Monday though.
anyway,I love what the lut is doing but with only the highlight burn down the highlights are too bright for the contrast added. Your sample is also still way too bright.

[DanSHP]

This is my process.

I go full linear. White walls 180 max. LUT. Pull down VFB highlight burn to a low level when testing, to judge the range reduction I can achieve in post.

Once rendered, I save the image out with no VFB corrections. I open the linear image in PS (32bit) and use a 32 bit levels adjustment layer to tone down the highlights. You can get exactly the same result (pretty much) as the VFB highlight reduction slider using this, it's probably better honestly. Load in LUT in too.

I follow this process for both interiors and exteriors. Works well for me.

[DanSHP]

Well the Reinhardt burn is already way down. Probably would be much brighter and burned out if not. I'm at total Chaos now so I can't check. Will do on Monday though.
anyway,I love what the lut is doing but with only the highlight burn down the highlights are too bright for the contrast added. Your sample is also still way too bright.

Hows Total Chaos? I went last year. Good fun!

What do you make of Sofia?

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

This is my process.

I go full linear. White walls 180 max. LUT. Pull down VFB highlight burn to a low level when testing, to judge the range reduction I can achieve in post.

Once rendered, I save the image out with no VFB corrections. I open the linear image in PS (32bit) and use a 32 bit levels adjustment layer to tone down the highlights. You can get exactly the same result (pretty much) as the VFB highlight reduction slider using this, it's probably better honestly. Load in LUT in too.

I follow this process for both interiors and exteriors. Works well for me.

Ok, I wanted to avoid Photoshop but most of the time there is something that needs to be done in post anyway. So I can give it a try.

I just arrived in Sofia for total chaos, so nothing to report yet

[piotrus3333]

MANUEL_MOUSIOL
if my example is too bright than I no longer understand “airy, light look” I guess. could not find anything more suitable at hand.

DanSHP
sorry, nothing personal but that 180 RGB thrown around in context of good pbr shaders need to stop. one of the glaring examples of information getting distorted. nothing wrong with the value, anything from ~160 to ~210 would probably be considered white wall by most but 180 comes from corona renderer - above it gi engine used to slow down. might not be a case anymore (no clue, haven’t used for quite a while) but corona devs were suggesting it as a safe and efficient “max”.

do you do any add/substract operations on 32bit renders in ps like lighting, reflections etc?
if not I think you should try saving linear render from vfb converted to 16bit log color - linear values get squeezed to 16 bit integrer (looks very low contrast). not linear anymore so no straightforward compositing but still very wide dynamic range and much easier on poor photoshop.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

MANUEL_MOUSIOL
if my example is too bright than I no longer understand “airy, light look” I guess. could not find anything more suitable at hand..

I was referring to the bright areas on the floor e.g. that look like they're burned out or almost are.
if I slap an lut on That or add a contrast that comes closer to what a camera would probably give me, these areas will definitely be burned out.
I need bright and airy but information in all places. My clients don't like burned out areas at all.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

I'm looking for something like this for my basis to put in contrast. This would give me total control.

[piotrus3333]

I can not imagine realistic render with highlights that highlight burn will not fix.
(I stand corrected here - no longer highlight compression. well done chaos group for changing the label. bit less confusion in ui - poor “global subdivision multiplier” from old vrays wasn’t so lucky, huh?)

seaside image - in filmic ocio there is a look “filmic log” - put that on raw linear render. log conversion from lut section in vfb is similar. tried that only today on one image but works nice in photoshop.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

As dynamic range should be infinite, I wonder why the highlight burn doesn't bring it all out when set to 0 even...

But yeah, I forgot about the log button. I'll have to test that again.

[piotrus3333]

As dynamic range should be infinite, I wonder why the highlight burn doesn't bring it all out when set to 0 even...
.

do you mind elaborating on that?

[DanSHP]

MANUEL_MOUSIOL
if my example is too bright than I no longer understand “airy, light look” I guess. could not find anything more suitable at hand.

DanSHP
sorry, nothing personal but that 180 RGB thrown around in context of good pbr shaders need to stop. one of the glaring examples of information getting distorted. nothing wrong with the value, anything from ~160 to ~210 would probably be considered white wall by most but 180 comes from corona renderer - above it gi engine used to slow down. might not be a case anymore (no clue, haven’t used for quite a while) but corona devs were suggesting it as a safe and efficient “max”.

do you do any add/substract operations on 32bit renders in ps like lighting, reflections etc?
if not I think you should try saving linear render from vfb converted to 16bit log color - linear values get squeezed to 16 bit integrer (looks very low contrast). not linear anymore so no straightforward compositing but still very wide dynamic range and much easier on poor photoshop.

Nothing personal taken! Appreciate the advice.

I do use render elements to add/subtract, just simple stuff though. I don't do full pass render comps to beauty. Do you mean save out the linear render to 16bit exr with LUT on log space??? How would this benefit Photoshop? Intrigued. I'd be interested in hearing your workflow when it comes to linear and Photoshop.

[piotrus3333]

heh, no workflow yet, still just testing it out.
the idea is to avoid floating point exr in photoshop as tools are very limited. the option of embedding 32bit PSB tonemapped with levels adjustment layes into 16bit PSD is a bit clumsy too. heavy on ps and nested smart objects are not auto updating with new renders.
I saved linear raw render from vfb using “convert to log” from lut section. you need to load “empty” lut to make it work (did mine in photoshop, saving from vfb will work as well)
I don’ t have any real experience with log spaces (I know there is a lot of them) so I used what was available in vray for simplicity. it is a bit different than filmic log encoding.
save that to 16bit png/tiff/whatever. no longer linear but still a lot of dynamic range and photoshop works at 100%. bring back contrast with curves.