Getting that airy, light look for interiors

[francomanko]

all sounds way too complicated

[DanSHP]

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.

So what benefit does saving out a 16bit exr in log space have over saving out a 16bit exr not in log space? Whats the advantage in PS?

[khoross]

all sounds way too complicated

I agree.

i would suggest puting everything in 128 gray and study your lighting first.
it shouldnt be that complicated, usualy a lut and a simple curve should be enough to bring contrast to an image. if not it means there is something wrong with the lighting.
maybe the HDR you are using doesnt suite the mood your looking for.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Are we talking about my lighting and approach to processing?
actually everything became easier.... I'm doing my post in vfb with a lut and just get some extra micro contrast in capture one. So my turnarounds are much faster now.
Lighting wise I guess the vision is to use just one HDRI... I need to get the furniture to look bright and good and no burned out areas whatsoever. So that's kind of tough. Maybe tonemapping in an external software would help with the burned out areas. I'd love to get it done in the VfB though...

But there is no tonemapping in the VfB... And even though dynamic range is infinite, highlight burn doesn't retrieve all the info in the highlights. Not as much as bringing exposure down anyway, but obviously that's not a choice.

Thoughts?

I'll post a picture of the room just lit with an one HDRI and no processing and highlight burn to default 1. Maybe you can see what I mean then...

[piotrus3333]

So what benefit does saving out a 16bit exr in log space have over saving out a 16bit exr not in log space? Whats the advantage in PS?

its linear 16/32bit exr vs 16bit log lets say tiff.
so 32bit PSD vs 16bit PSD. the array of options available - adjustment layers, filters - is much wider. and you retain access to full dynamic range of render.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

its linear 16/32bit exr vs 16bit log lets say tiff.
so 32bit PSD vs 16bit PSD. the array of options available - adjustment layers, filters - is much wider. and you retain access to full dynamic range of render.

It's like video footage from a camera. Very compressed so you can grade it like you want, unlike 32bit in Photoshop, which doesn't have many editing options.
but there is other software available in which you have more editing options in 32 bit... So best of both worlds. Never used them yet though..

[khoross]

Are we talking about my lighting and approach to processing?
actually everything became easier.... I'm doing my post in vfb with a lut and just get some extra micro contrast in capture one. So my turnarounds are much faster now.
Lighting wise I guess the vision is to use just one HDRI... I need to get the furniture to look bright and good and no burned out areas whatsoever. So that's kind of tough. Maybe tonemapping in an external software would help with the burned out areas. I'd love to get it done in the VfB though...

But there is no tonemapping in the VfB... And even though dynamic range is infinite, highlight burn doesn't retrieve all the info in the highlights. Not as much as bringing exposure down anyway, but obviously that's not a choice.

Thoughts?

I'll post a picture of the room just lit with an one HDRI and no processing and highlight burn to default 1. Maybe you can see what I mean then...

your approach to processing ( reinhard 0.05 and highlightburn to 0.05, and in the curve you,are killing the highlight )
this is why i think there must be something wrong with the lighting or the HDR you are using .
it shouldnt be that hard to get light in the room that you need to set an exposure that low and kill the highlight in the rinhard setting then in VFB both in curve and highlight burn. that is 3X less highlight in an image.
althought i get that this process is faster for you now, using the VFB to adjust the image.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

Yeah, you are probably right and as you can see I'm not content yet either. Although I have to say that log videos do look very flat and that is very practical if you don't want to work with a 32bit file, or can't for that matter (talking about limited 32 bit support in Photoshop here). So I think trying to get a very flat image for post processing isn't the worst idea.

I'm mostly using hdris from HDRI haven btw. You think he's doing something wrong?

[DanSHP]

If you take the HDRI into PS, you can check the strength (quality) of the sun in EV (32 bit mode). I do this with all my HDRI's before I use them. You can then paint in more if need be to get a stronger sun hence more direct light/contrast/shadows.

I read somewhere the EV of a sunny day sun should be around 12-13 EV.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

you mean changing exposure and seeing when the sun turns grey?
I can actually go down to -16. On the + side it is around 7 until everyhing is white.

I did some tests now.
Setting everything to default (so reinhard burn to 1), I get this without any post:

not very bright overall.

but when just changing exposure to make everything bright as I read on here it becomes like this:

good enough I thought. I can reduce the burn and then apply my LUT from there:

as you can see, it is not very pleasant. which means the rendering doesnt fit what the LUT is doing. it is too bright.
because a lot of people told me that one HDRI is enough, I switched off additional lights to light the product from left and also from the top (like an additional light bounce from a flash):

too dark...so I upped the dome light:


now it is burned out and there is still too much contrast.

so I dont see how I can do anything else but to lower burn value two times, bring them down in curves additionally to then apply the LUT.
I know I know: why do you HAVE to a apply the LUT, you will ask. And until now I was in favor of doing everything by hand in curves and levels. But for a faster workflow and for the specific look that I like about this LUT, I would prefer to use it AND keep everything in the framebuffer.
Although I have the feeling that maybe proper tonemapping is the more elegant solution, especially for the lens effects to work properly.

sorry for the double upload, I am not sure how I can fix this in the forums...having thumbails and also photos attached to look at in large..

[khoross]

trying to recreate your scenario scene. bah this is not an easy scene to light basicly you have one source of light coming from the balcony door, but still this is how i would approch it.
material 128 gray in a vray color map gama 2.2. HDR from 3dCollective. but different HDRis in my test dont change much in this scene because of the door the main source of light.
for the log effect i just bring the contrast down, because that what log is, an image without contrast. not just the highlight that are brought down the shdows are lifted also .
hope that can help in your approche.

[Ihno]

Why don't you put a soft box behind the camera to bright up the right site of the image? That way you wouldn't have to overexpose so much which you then have to fight in the tonemapping. You're chasing your own tail.
The only other solution would be a mask for the color correction which you can't do in the vfb.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

I am actualy quite content with how the end result looked (wich is on page 4 of this thread), and I approached it like a photographer - lighting for the product with a huge softbox and throwing light to the ceiling to brighten everything (of course i cheated with just using a big plane light lighting the room and not using bounces).
BUT I would still like to get a more flat result without having to lower reinhard to almost 0 and then using further highlight burn and curves in the VFB. I even had to lower reflection intensity of the floor down to almost half so that it wont burn out so much.

and piotrus3333 seems to imply I am doing something wrong about how I go about it and some people earlier in the thread said that it is easier than I make it, implying that one dome will handle everything.

khoross nice, didnt expect someone putting so much effort in! thanks. In your case the highlights around the window are still burned out and the whole thing will change a lot with the proper materials for sure, I also played with bringing the contrast down and in the end did it with curves to have more control, as you can see in my previous post.
here is the scene simplified btw, if anyone wants to play around with it. i even extended the window front so that more light comes in. Dont mind the holes here and there, still didnt come around to fix stuff as I was a little rushed to build the whole thing.
https://adobe.ly/30tG3Gg
3ds max 2015 btw

anyway, maybe it is just not possible in the current framebuffer cause tonemapping is too simple there...

[piotrus3333]

"no post pro, reinhard to 1" is looking like "no post pro, reinhard to 0 (exponential color mapping)" should look
"no post, upped camera expo" is how "no post pro, reinhard to 1" should look.

[MANUEL_MOUSIOL]

"no post pro, reinhard to 1" is looking like "no post pro, reinhard to 0 (exponential color mapping)" should look
"no post, upped camera expo" is how "no post pro, reinhard to 1" should look.

Lol I had to read this 5 times to finally understand.
i think I got it, but anyway, when the upped camera exposure doesn't give me good results with the lut, what would you do then (inside the VfB)?