Chaos Player should be bundled with any Vray purchase

[thomas_bussey]

here's why: the software is more and more dependent (with lightmix feature, batch processing etc) on VRIMG files, a propitiatory format.

When rendering animation sequences your advised process is to use the standalone denoiser, as mentioned on a previous thread batch processing currently only works with sequences of VRimg, so in order to retain editability on the bloom and glare of a sequence - what in effect is a post-process effect, you need to render to VRIMG, then convert to EXR for viewing the sequence, that alone is quite a lot of data to move, even more if you wish to denoise in-between.

The Chaos player is, as I see it, quite an essential step for early review and low-res export of the early test sequences. Having to convert everything to EXR just to review is quite a painful process.

As mentioned in a previous post, this would be easily fixed also by allowing batch processing of EXR in the VFB, that way I could render straight to 32bit exr (although obviously you'd lose lightmix functionality)

Just my 2p, I'm sure this isn't going to change any minds.

[Vizioen]

I would like the Chaos Player to have a VFB integration as well, with converters/denoiser tools and everything else also included. All these different tools and places to search for them is just not very user friendly.

[yolov]

Batch processing of EXR is available in the VFB in V-Ray 6.
A few notes that Player can play vrimg files too.
And even after conversion to EXR, if the light select channels for light mixing are still in the image (if you convert to a multi-channel image) - you can still do light mixing in any post-processing application, including Player. You won't see the same VFB controls for light mixing, but essentially you can multiply and grade any of the channels, add them together to get the RGB beauty and that's it.

Let me know if that helps in any way, hopefully I understood the questions correctly.

[thomas_bussey]

Excellent - good news! will have to give that a try.

[Streetwise]

Batch processing of EXR is available in the VFB in V-Ray 6.

yolov how do you do that? When I try to batch process from VFB 6, it just generates another .vrimg file! What's the secret to export to .exr? I should add that all of the corrections are done in the VFB, so all I need is an easy way to convert 100 images to .exr to be further batch converted to .tif and .jpg. Seems like a straight-forward process. Just not sure how to make it happen.

[Vizioen]

Yeah I haven't found a way to do that either. Before Chaos Player I used to batch process vrimg after some CC and so. Then use the vrimg to openexr converter. But all in all very cumbersome.

Nowadays I just use the chaosplayer to convert to exr or jpg whatever I need. But I need to check create effectsresult channel and then in Chaosplayer I can choose that channel to be exported.

I feel like all the tools are there, but I would strongly suggest to clean the house and start combining things into one super VFB/Player, where all the denoising, CCing, converting, viewing/playing,... can happen.

[yolov]

I feel like all the tools are there, but I would strongly suggest to clean the house and start combining things into one super VFB/Player, where all the denoising, CCing, converting, viewing/playing,... can happen.

Thank you! This is part of the plan going forward, it just needs a lot of time to get there.

[yolov]

yolov how do you do that? When I try to batch process from VFB 6, it just generates another .vrimg file! What's the secret to export to .exr? I should add that all of the corrections are done in the VFB, so all I need is an easy way to convert 100 images to .exr to be further batch converted to .tif and .jpg. Seems like a straight-forward process. Just not sure how to make it happen.

The purpose of the VFB batch process is to apply a VFB preset file to multiple images. It outputs the same format it reads (supported formats are vrimg and exr).
It was specifically requested for this purpose, but I can see how it hints it can do more than it was designed to. There's no secret export, the thing is - there's just no format conversion, because it was not designed for this.

What you need is something different. If we put aside the ability to apply color corrections from a VFB preset, you can automate the conversion with Chaos Player.
It's a matter of reading a sequence once, and outputting it to multiple formats - read vrimg > write to tif, jpg and exr.

You can do this manually by just loading the vrimg in Player, then do File > Export Layer Sequence. This will save the selected layer to whatever supported format you need.
Repeat to use Export Layer Sequence to convert to more formats.

To automate a simple read-once, write-multiple, you can do something like this from a Windows Command prompt:

"C:\Program Files\Chaos Group\Chaos Player\chaosplayer_qt5.exe" "C:\Users\yolov\Desktop\test1\SH_Bags_01_
.####.exr" --export_layer_sequence="C:\Users\yolov\Desktop\test 1\output.jpg" --export_layer_sequence="C:\Users\yolov\Des
ktop\test1\output.png" --exit

There's a few things to keep in mind:
*) if you load a vrimg or multi-channel exr - only the currently displayed layer will be saved. For example, if you want to write out only the Glare channel, you need to switch to it after the sequence load, here's an example: --image_layer=":Glare"
You can switch to image channels by index too, not just name. You can read more about command-line usage here: https://docs.chaos.com/display/PLAYER/Command+Reference
*) Saving to EXR only supports single-channel files, i.e. if you read a vrimg with multiple channels (render elements) you will not be able to just convert it to a multi-channel EXR.

Let me know if this helps? Or if we can further improve something so Player is more usable.

[Streetwise]

Thanks for the information yolov ! This is good to know. I'm just now discovering all of the ins and outs of the various formats. But someday, it would be nice to upgrade VFB's abilities.

[yolov]

I'm all years and always curious to hear people's expectations - feel free to post here or DM me with ideas on how you see things develop in the future. This will help us make sure that are plans fall in line with expectations.