VFB2 further improvements - your help needed!

[matanov]

Hi all,

Now that you have had a few months with the new VFB, we really need your feedback for further improving it. Please take moment to think about the points below and share your opinions:

1. What kind of post processing operations do you do after rendering? (please provide detailed description and if possible example files: .psd, .nk etc)
2. Is what you have now in VFB2 enough to minimize reaching to a separate post processing software?

Mind that we are working on a masking system for the next V5 update, so examples for this from your current workflows will be extremely helpful.

[kosso_olli]

The addition of an "Overlay" layer would be nice. That way you could put additional elements on top or in the foreground of the rendered image. Usefull for integrating billboards of people into architectural scenes for example. The overlay should use respect the alpha of the file you specify.

[^Lele^]

An "Over" you mean?
Overlay is something entirely different, in my book.

[kosso_olli]

Yeah, sorry. That's what I meant.
What is an overlay for you?

[^Lele^]

It's a conditional operation the result of which depends on the images' brightness.
That they may have an alpha is accessory.
The over operation is simply Aa+Bb*(1-a) / a+ b*(1-a), without regard to what the image contents may be (Capital letters are the RGB for images A and B, the small caps are the respective alphas).
See Nuke, or The Compositing Bible, or Wikipedia for reference, if you want to dig deeper.

[muoto]

I would like to have better color adjustments, maybe like the ones in Resolve 17

[braddewald]

1) Color-Correcting single objects within the VFB would be amazing. Like changing the saturation of the floor object.

2) Being able to add a render element as an adjustment layer. Like adding the reflection element and changing the blend mode to "screen"

[Moriah]

1 - Better Color Correction layers (the closer to Camera Raw the better)
2 - Ability to export the CCs to a LUT (like in Next)
3 - Adding the frame number to the history (requested months ago, no change still)
4 - Old behaviour back of splitting the CCs from the Lens Effects and the Denoiser (requested also by several people)

[AbeTJH]

I think making capabilities similar to Photoshop's Camera Raw Filter is a great place to start. We tend to use that the most because of the amount of tools in there.

But specifically:

1. One of our main reasons we bring out images in photoshop is to manually desaturate, brighten, and darken individual items. Being able to mask out and set individual adjustment layers like in photoshop would be super helpful.
2. Also use photoshop for different sharpen effects. Having some sort of sharpen/ blur/ soften built into the frame buffer would allow us to skip that step.
3. Filmic Tonemap - Its clear there is a lot of power here but I find some of the settings to be confusing to understand what each does. If there is a way to make it clear what each setting does, something like the camera raw filter in photoshop as someone has mentioned, it will go a long way.
4. Add a histogram (Provides useful info)
5. Add ability to add vignetting in the frame buffer instead of camera would help alot as well. It may not be physically accurate but sure gives extra freedom
6. Add a custom color option to White Balance - similar to how using a custom color in the white balance feature for the vray physical camera
7. Lightmix temperature - Add option to set the temperature of the lights instead of only by color
8. Lightmix changing color by absolute or relative values - As of right now if you have a warm light rendered and wan't to change it to be cooler, you have to add blue in the light mix. I think this is not very intuitive in every situation. Having the ability to set a lights color based on an absolute value as opposed to adding a relative value to get the right result would make it easier.
9. Adjusting individual colors across the image would be helpful as well (etc. adjusting all green values to be more cyan or yellow, see camera raw filter)
10. Maybe adding a film grain filter and post effect chromatic aberration. Not as critical.

I can send a "typical" photoshop file that we have done here if you think that will be helpful to see.

Let me know!

[AbeTJH]

Would like to add:

11. Being able to use the composite and light mix functions at the same time. at the moment it seems u can only use one or the other. We tend to stick just using the lightmix at that point and doing any specific adjustments in photoshop.
12. Adding a levels adjustment layer similar to photoshop. The levels in in VFB 1 was hard to control and not very intuitive. We never used it because of this and stuck with photoshop.

[glorybound]

Sharpening

[muoto]

DOF in post/vfb

[psanitra]

1. Additional render info stored in History(vrimg), like sampler min/max/threshold , can just be exr metadata loadable with right click as it is now.
2. VFB settings menu, with configurable defaults for VFB. For example default color profile( sRGB, ACES, LUT), defaults what panels are visible, like history or color corrections, or just plain image.
3, Configurable shortcuts aka shortcut editor, for all available VFB commands. Some people like doing exposure up/down with F keys, some with +- etc, let us choose.
4. Fullscreen view mode with/without panels. For example nice to compare AB render in full screen mode, no control panels, just swap the images with keyboard shortcut.
5. Alpha background style. Black or checkboard.

[Moriah]

5. Alpha background style. Black or checkboard.

Also support for image sequences as background/foreground and ability to offset the start frame.

[matanov]

1) Color-Correcting single objects within the VFB would be amazing. Like changing the saturation of the floor object.

2) Being able to add a render element as an adjustment layer. Like adding the reflection element and changing the blend mode to "screen"

1 will be available as I wrote in the next update. You'll be able to choose (pick from screen) masks based on almost all masking render elements (MultiMatte, Cryptomatte, Object/Render/Mtl ID..)

Could you elaborate a little more about 2?