rgb pass vs beauty pass......help!

[dean_dmoo]

Hi,

This has been discussed before, but I can't find the relevant topic so I'll post it here to see if there is a known fix.

We are currently rendering an animation and baking the toning into the beauty pass as that is our prefered workflow. I realize a non baked workflow would be better, but that also creates more steps in the process. Especially when you can get the result needed out of vray. In older vray versions the toning was saving in the origRGB and the RGB_colour (beauty). This worked well for us as we could decide between the original image and the denoised one and blend between them where needed.

However since, maybe Next, this function was disabled and for us the origRGB was a useless pass. Normally this isn't an issue because we work with stills and we just save from the vrimg in the VFB a couple of versions of the beauty (toned, toned + denoised & toned + glare). This gives us enough options in post.

But, now we are doing an extensive animation we are losing both the toned version and the glare version. We are now only working with a toned + denoised pass. And the denoiser isn't always cleaning up everything as needed (or an artifact here and there) and we now can't mask that with the base toned pass as that doesn't get created. We will have to fiddle about with toning in the video editor instead which isn't optimal.

How can we get the 3 beauty passes (rgb toned, rgb toned + denoised, rgb toned + glare) without rendering 3 times....or having to do everything in a 3rd party software package based on a non baked workflow?! Am I missing an option somewhere?

We are currently rendering the animations and will be doing so over the weekend so if anyone has some info it's welcome! Thanks!

EDIT,

Just seen another thread with similar issue. Will continue this there.

[piotrus3333]

not using standalone denoiser tool? (frame blending for smoother result)

[dean_dmoo]

Hi Piotrus,

Ive added this question to the other thread. Same issues as with passes really.

https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...ender-elements

Does the standelone denoiser work on 8bit jpeg's? Testing it now, but doesn't seem to be doing anything.

[piotrus3333]

no - you need vrimg or exr with all passes needed for denoising.

[piotrus3333]

and what video editor are you using?
and why tone mapping there is not optimal?

[dean_dmoo]

Hi, we can do it in there aswell, DaVinci Resolve. But it's getting it 1-on-1 to match which becomes a hassle doing it like that. But it's more for the principle to have a consistent workflow from within Vray. We are just starting to work on animations so are running into these bumps in the road. But I would hope for a system to have the option to just save the passes with the toning baked in + the option to separate the lens effects from the denoiser effects pass. Doesn't seem to be a complex option to me. I can do it manually fine from the vfb for stills. But for animations it becomes limited.

[piotrus3333]

Resolve has Fusion inside - you can do all the comping there, much more than in VFB.

but ok.

bake in tone mapping (settings > color mapping) I suggest exponential so you can reverse it if needed
save not vrimg but exr (easier to put into Fusion if needed)
use unclamped color render element to get lens effects working
add light select render element containing all the lights (exclude - none) and set it to be denoised and color mapped

this will give you:
render.origRGB.png (16bit - do not edit on 8bit jpegs...) - tone mapped noisy
render.RGBcolor - denoised with lens effects
render.VRayLightSelect - tone mapped denoised

[dean_dmoo]

Hi,

Thanks for the steps, appreciate it! Will try and set that up.

[piotrus3333]

just had a better idea (probably a bit late):
instead of using unclamped color and having to correct the exposure you can uncompress exponential tonemapping (Reinhard with burn 0) with this:

EDIT: doesn’t seem to work, something not right with divide blend.

[piotrus3333]

correct layer stack in VFB. no need for unclamped color: