linear compositing

[darloman]

First of all - congratulations on a great image viewer. We have just switched over from RV and fcheck and are loving the extensive feature set in pdplayer.

We render openEXRs out of mentalray for maya. So we'd love to use pdplayer to quality check our render layers before we send them to Flame for compositing. In this usage we'd happily swap some real-time speed for the ability to see the layers correctly summed together in linear space before being displayed in sRGB, even if it were a lot slower.

I'm sure that we are far from the only house wanting to use pdplayer for simple "pre-comp" EXR layer checking as well as real-time animation checking. Any chance of a button somewhere to switch from 8bit to linear compositing mode?

I know it's a bit cheeky to ask for this, but pdplayer already has all the buttons/features in the interface to put together these simple comps, just not the correct behind-the-scenes maths. This one extra feature would save us from having to spend thousands on a Nuke license full of functionality that we just don't need. Then again, it took Flame a decade to update their behind-the-scenes maths...so it might not be as easy as it sounds!

Stuart

[pdimov]

It is indeed not easy to switch the internal engine to operate in proper linear space.

If you can live with the limited precision, you can use the following workaround: switch the EXR layers to the sRGB color space, then overlay an adjustment layer on top and switch it to Linear color space. This would effectively map the EXRs into 8 bit linear, do the compositing, then convert to sRGB as a final pass.

[darloman]

Thanks for the fast feedback.

Gave your workaround a try on my overnight renders and I have to say it works quite well. Clever suggestion. There is a noticeable difference in the shadow areas, but it's not a deal-breaker. After all, we're not trying to do comps in pdplayer, just check that all our exr passes function correctly when you add them all together. Saves us from looking like idiots when we hand stuff to Flame.

I'm just amazed that a flipbook program has adjustment layers and blending modes at all! It's just great. Our programmer has already made us an auto-precomp-last-render-in-pdplayer button inside Maya. Life is good.

Still would be awesome to read in a future update "have added true linear compositing option" but thanks for the workaround until then.

Stuart

[pskdude]

sheesh

wow another one of these i never thought i would see this again, Does anyone even play wow anymore. =P after realizing countless hours off wasted hours in their lives =)

[jozef_chvojka]

another chinese sell-bot...
how did they manage to register here on forum