EXRs

[YoyoBoy]

Am I right that the only way to get all your VRay render elements properly saved into your EXRs is to do all your file saving through the VRay Frame Buffer? I just haven't had any luck through the Max Render Output.

Does this also mean that there is no way to save out the EXRs I want using the batch renderer? There's a renderfarm that I hire and it would be nice to be able to tell the guy to just run the batch renderer instead of sending him different files for each thing I need.

[joconnell]

I've also had problems writing out to exr via the frame buffer and it not taking the elements. This might be fixed in a later build but I've had most success going to vrimg and then converting to exr after.

[YoyoBoy]

That's not quite what I'm saying. Saving to EXR in the VRay Frame Buffer is the ONLY way I can get the elements to save properly. I haven't played at all with .vrimg, since I don't have any programs that can read those.

[glorybound]

vrimg saves them all and vray comes with a command line converter.

[YoyoBoy]

Right, but that's just one clunky step that should really be eliminated. Ideally, VRay would have the ability to simply save EXRs with all the elements you want through the Max Render Output.

[joconnell]

That's not quite what I'm saying. Saving to EXR in the VRay Frame Buffer is the ONLY way I can get the elements to save properly. I haven't played at all with .vrimg, since I don't have any programs that can read those.

Yep I understand what you're saying, and I'm saying I've also had bad experiences with saving exr directly from the framebuffer too, where not all of the elements I've set up get written out properly. The only 100% reliable method I've had is to go to vrimg first and then to exr after using the vrimg2exr utility. There's apparently a more feature rich exr writer in the internal builds in vray hq so hopefully they'll sort it.

[vance3d]

I've had limited success with saving out exr's through max's own exr output. Some of my channels don't seem to render out as expected.

the only real advantage it has over saving through the vray frame buffer is that it can save exr's in scanline format.
It would be great if vray could automatically add the conversion from vrimg to scanline format exr as part of the render process.
post processing is such a drag.

V Miller

[joconnell]

Heya Vance,

I think that's what chaos have actually done and it's in the internal builds - scanline saving and the datawindow options really make a huge difference in nuke so I think both of those things are now in there, it's just a case of when the next service pack appears with the options added in. I'll be interested to see if that's only enabled for interactive rendering as opposed to something like backburner though.

[instinct]

I have never seen Renderelements beeing dropped when saved via the VRay Framebuffer. We are generating a LOT of frames and i have never seen that issue.
We are running a post conversion step anyways for many things (incl. check routines, metadata injection etc) so the conversion is beeing done automatically here.
I do agree that an option would be nice and as joconnell mentioned on its way as it seems.
Saving to EXR via the Framebuffer is the most reliable and "unbiased" way of saving out EXRs. It saves out plain linear 16bitHalf or 32bitFloat EXRs. Nothing else. Perfect :P

Regards,
Thorsten

[joconnell]

I got an issue literally yesterday - I was rendering full frame files with a lot of elements and had a few of them missing - went out to vrimg instead and it was all back. That said it might have been network hiccups in here or something sort of other hocus pocus.

[CA Portugal]

You can save EXRs by using Batch Render if you manually save each render preset and in the VFB give the EXR a path for each render still.

So if you have 8 stills in render bath you should have also 8 render presets with 8 dif exr save paths in the VFB.

I suppose this is too hard task for an animation job...

[jstrob]

I also got problem today for outputing EXR with elements. 2 elements were outputing corrupted exr and another one was rendering black. It's the first time I got such problem. The only new thing I changed in my pipeline was to output to scanline (save image to scanlines instead of tiles in EXR opitions). I just relaunched the render and the elements were back...

[instinct]

What Version is that ? I still have not seen that at all.

[joconnell]

Jstrob are you saving out over a network or going directly to a local drive? I've had this happen on vray 2.0.02 but that said I really don't trust the network setup that I wrote the files out with, so it might be that. I'm putting through a load of things direct to exr at the minute, fingers crossed they all come out complete.

[joconnell]

Yep, same thing again but I'm starting to think it's a network issue. Would there be any changes done to exr saving from the buffer between 2.0.02 and 2.1 I wonder? If not it must be down to the networks storage I'm going to being utter rubbish. Also I wonder why there's less issues when I go to vrimg instead? No doubt it's got a lot of advantages or else Chaos wouldn't have created it but I wonder what the difference would be in terms of it's reliability in this case over exr even though they're both going out over the same shitty network?