Cebas PSD Manager and Vray - Some Issues

[MegaPixel]

I'm having difficulty getting clean antialiased isolations of my scene objects/materials when using the Vray renderer no matter what AA filtering method I select. My layer isolations tend to be very jagged and pixely. However as soon as I switch to the scanline renderer, I get very clean isolations, again regardless of AA filtering. The drawback of using the scanline renderer is that it won't recogonize the Vray materials so no selected material g-buffered items will isolate. Was wondering if anyone else here who uses the PSD manger experienced this and is this a question that I should be possing to the cebas support team?

Has anyone here who has used the PSD maneger experienced the new 1.5 render elements yet? I know it would be to much to ask the renderer to layerize all of your elements for you into a .psd file, but is it simple enough to render out seperate pass's for multiple material and object ID's at once?

Thanks - Dave

[oconv]

try this:

in the PSD File Format Options section check
Rendered Image Output As Layer

in the G-Buffer Output check Separated Object Output and create Channels.
Then add the Objects you want to get selections for.

any other settings leave as defaults.

in ps you can load the selections and get your objects isolated. works for me without jaggy problems.

-oconv

[MegaPixel]

oconv,

Thank for the explaination of how to use the psd manager but I'm way ahead of you there. I've got the typical usuage down pat - been using it for a few years now. The problem to be addressed is the reason why the alpha channels seen in Photoshop from Vray have a very noisy fringe on them as opposed to scanline created alpha channels which tend to be cleaner and continuous. Perhaps after I get back to work I can create some examples for ya.

Dave

[Jinx]

I dont know if this will help but try to uncheck the Rand in the Image Sampler, It might give you a bit noisy AA. By the way, what kind of material are you trying to render?

Just in case you havent seen them, here are a few ponters on using AAFilters from the manual, Hope it helps :

For smooth scenes with only a few blurry effects and smooth textures, the Adaptive subdivision sampler with its ability to undersample the image is unbeatable.

For images with detailed textures or lots of geometry detail and only a few blurry effects, the Two-level sampler performs best. Also in the case of animations involving detailed textures, the Adaptive subdivision sampler might produce jittering which the Two-level sampler avoids.

For complex scenes with lots of blurry effects and/or detailed textures, the Fixed rate sampler performs best and is very predictable with regards to the quality and render time.

- Colin

[MegaPixel]

Thank you Jinx. I think the majority of the time, I've been using QMC sampling. Perhaps a switch over to adaptive as your pointers suggest will produce smoother fringing results. Thanks for your help.

Just so you know, I usually shut all light sources off and turn off GI when doing my PSD isolation render pass since all I really care about are the alpha channels of my g-buffer selections. This speeds the render up considerably even though it renders pure black.

[oconv]

Just so you know, I usually shut all light sources off and turn off GI when doing my PSD isolation render pass since all I really care about are the alpha channels of my g-buffer selections. This speeds the render up considerably even though it renders pure black.

that's the way i render psd as well. since the psd file can not store more than 56 channels, you sometimes have to do it twice, if you need more channels.

megapixel: i'm just curious what g-buffer selections you are rendering out?

-oconv

[MegaPixel]

I usually select as many individual geometric objects as I can and also tend to fill up all 16 material ID slots as well. I could swear I've rendered out a psd file with more then 56 layers before but I could be mistaken.

[oconv]

so you're ending up with a psd file, that allows you to select each piece of geometry separately.
that's what you get with the channels/object method as well, in a nice tidy psd with loadable selections/channels to isolate the objects. and no jaggy issue IMO. let's say not more jaggie than the image itself.
56 channels, not layers

[MegaPixel]

I think the ultimate outcome is the same regardless of which method you use, no? I choose the "As Layer" option myself. My psd file ultimatly ends up with a folder for each g-buffer category I choose to use with various pre isolated objects within. For instance, If I used 20 scene objects and 10 material ID's, then my psd file would have a folder called "Geometry" with 20 solid black object isolations (it just applies the alpha channel automatically) and a folder called "Material ID's" with 10 solid black material isolations also. I can't image there being any difference in keeping 52 channels vs 52 layers. The layers are created from the channels, it's just taking it a step forward for you. So if the channels are being created with a noisy fringe, then it will appear on the layers as well... right?

[timmatron]

I used to use PSD manager all the time. But I was running into the same problem with aliasing. I don't think psd manager uses Vray's antialising settings, so it doesn't matter what you do.

After coming to work here, I stopped using it and went back to scanline passes to get the channels. It's a little more effort, but the channels are perfect and totally worth it.

[MegaPixel]

Well, as I mentioned before, I didn't really start noticing any problems until I started using the Vray renderer which is why I started the thread here in the first place. Yes I can just use the scanline for everything I suppose, however that would mean I'd have to switch over all Vray materials to standard materials before I did it or else the material isolations will not get recognized By any chance is there a convert Vray scene to scanline scene feature anywhere?

[oconv]

the VRayMtlConverter2 does that pretty well:
http://www.scriptspot.com/scripts/we...rter2_info.zip

it works with 1.47.x, but not with 1.5
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpB...=mtl+converter

i'll try the scanline method for comparison