Question about LWF

[^Lele^]

Oh, i agree entirely.
That's why i spoke of POST.
Bracketing is needed due to the lower dynamic range of 16Bpc Raw files.
At worst, with a floating point image, it's enough to mask and CC locally to correct for burns and such.
No re-rendering XD

[MikeHampton]

Hmmm... I just thought of something though. Again.. I haven't done this because I kind of like blown out/washed out exteriors when seen from interiors..

But couldn't you just use the Vray frame buffer.. and change the exposure in the buffer (one exposure for the dimly lit areas and another for the brightly lit areas) and save out two images just from that? And then comp them together without the need to render twice?

Would that work? I don't know how the exposure control in the vray frame buffer compares to actually changing the exposure of the camera and rendering it again.

[^Lele^]

Why would you do that?
What's different from masking the FP image and CCing it selectively?
Double the storage space needed?
Am I missing something obvious?

[MikeHampton]

Maybe are pages are overlapping but not exaclty the same..

Is there enough info in the file there to mask and correct the blownout parts of an image (i.e. exterior windows from an interior shot)?

In an 8bit file... I guess I don't see how there would be enough info there.. if it's blown out to 255,255,255.. I don't see how you are going to get any info out of that to be able to correct? Are you using a 32bit .exr file maybe where you do have data in that blown out area that can be corrected?

[^Lele^]

Well, yes. that's the whole point of HDR imagery.
Of course going to extremes might break the concept, but for archviz work that's not an issue.
Four BILLION levels of white (instead of 255 or 65k) should allow you to expose a candle and the sun without need to render twice.