New Physical camera its a mess.

[JezUK]

I found that I had to change the Exposure Gain settings from the "Target" default to "Manual" and then set the ISO down to the same as what I was using for the VRay camera. Maybe you've already done that?

Thanks David, but I'd already done that.

[pnel77]

Yes...The same exposure issue happen with my cameras..The new Physical cam renders brighter than the original VrayPhysical cam.
Even though the settings are identical?

[WilleViz]

I'm tentatively moving over to 2016 from '14 (missed 2015), and tried some tests - using identical cameras from a past test scene I find I get different output results. The new Physical Camera in 2016 is giving me lighter results (with ALL camera settings being identical to a pre-16 camera). Not massively different, I'd say around 2/3 of an f-stop brighter.

Any ideas ?

Yes...The same exposure issue happen with my cameras..The new Physical cam renders brighter than the original VrayPhysical cam.
Even though the settings are identical?

Yeah, I can confirm the same thing. 1 to 2/3 stop brighter than the old Vray camera. This is obviously done with ISO set manually, so shutter speed, aperture and ISO is the same on both the old and new camera. Not a big issue once you're aware of it, but you need to be aware of it.

[RALPH_PINEL]

When will they replace this new camera with the old vray camera?

This new camera setup sucks big time.

[Morne]

When will they replace this new camera with the old vray camera?

This new camera setup sucks big time.

How so? What part don't you like or struggle with?

[JezUK]

When will they replace this new camera with the old vray camera?

This new camera setup sucks big time.

I'm not sure that'll ever be the case - now that this camera is in Autodesk's hands (presumably under agreement with Chaos not to implement their own camera version ?), we all know how responsive Autodesk are towards their loyal user's feedback.......

Which is a shame really as Vlado and the Chaos team have always been the complete opposite in terms of listening to their client base and responding rapidly to their wishes.......

A wish I'd love to see happen in this lifetime is for the shutter / aperture / iso / EV (even) to be stepped incremental within the camera's interface (and not as it is currently, i.e. 'stepless') - the documentation clearly gives real world stepped values (1/125, 1/250, f/11 etc) and talks about stops (halving and doubling etc) yet decided to omit this basic photography concept. A simple check box allowing it to be switched on or off would then please everybody.

[vlado]

presumably under agreement with Chaos not to implement their own camera version ?

There is no such agreement

Best regards,
Vlado

[JezUK]

There is no such agreement

Best regards,
Vlado

That's brilliant news

So please.... can our next Vray camera have a stepped Aperture/Shutter/Iso/EV settings option (with real world whole-stop, half-stop values, just like a real camera which can be disabled as per the user prefers)

[JezUK]

I think the problem was that I didn't have "Improve Quality Progressively" checked as it works now. Weird though that the lens distortion now works as well. Oh well, on to other problems....

I tried this and I still don't see any DoF preview in the viewport ? wide open apertures, like 0.8, should give very noticeable dof.....

[^Lele^]

I was about to post you a script to extend the standard physical camera with a plugin version with a rollout with just the controls you wanted, either alone or along the other, standard ones, but i just discovered that the physcam does not like to be plugged in.
Namely, it won't create the rollout at all, in either fashion (ie. replaceUI:true or false makes no difference), while the same code on a standard camera works without issue.
Something to be made known to Autodesk, perhaps?

[JezUK]

I was about to post you a script to extend the standard physical camera with a plugin version with a rollout with just the controls you wanted, either alone or along the other, standard ones, but i just discovered that the physcam does not like to be plugged in.
Namely, it won't create the rollout at all, in either fashion (ie. replaceUI:true or false makes no difference), while the same code on a standard camera works without issue.
Something to be made known to Autodesk, perhaps?

Hi Lele,

I've decided for the time being to revert back to the previous VRayPhysicalCamera, so any script as you mention would still be useful

[MegaPixel]

I'm probably not the first to suggest something like this, but here it goes: You seem to have conquered render settings at this point with the "Vray Quick Settings" which is wonderful. Now users from all sorts of experience levels can jump right in to Vray and start rendering without having to be a render settings expert - fabulous. What if you were to create something similar for the new Physical Camera Settings, call it "PhysCam Quick Settings" which might allow the user to pick from a few different presets, such as "Exterior Daylight, Exterior Night Light, Interior Daylight, Interior Night Light"? This would allow for even more users who are not photographers, to quickly jump into the physical based workflow with settings that are appropriate to begin with, which can obviously be modified from there on. I'm just thinking out loud here.

[Morne]

I'm probably not the first to suggest something like this, but here it goes: You seem to have conquered render settings at this point with the "Vray Quick Settings" which is wonderful. Now users from all sorts of experience levels can jump right in to Vray and start rendering without having to be a render settings expert - fabulous. What if you were to create something similar for the new Physical Camera Settings, call it "PhysCam Quick Settings" which might allow the user to pick from a few different presets, such as "Exterior Daylight, Exterior Night Light, Interior Daylight, Interior Night Light"? This would allow for even more users who are not photographers, to quickly jump into the physical based workflow with settings that are appropriate to begin with, which can obviously be modified from there on. I'm just thinking out loud here.

You will always get people that put 1 or 2 60 watt globes in a warehouse then put the camera on "interior daylight" going, "But hey why is it so dark?!?"
But I agree, the more automated things, the less users have to worry about it and just get on with the job.

The downside is that the easier it gets, the less change you have in demanding higher salaries because anybody can do the job (not taking into account colour theory, composition etc)

Luckily for now there are still a number of highly technical areas so we can still demand good wages

[tzaar]

Instead of creating a new thread, I'll hop on this one with some questions/suggestions about the new Physical Camera and the Physical Camera Exposure Controll.

We have a sort of template file for our team, we're I've made a simple sunny noon setup that has a camera that's tweaked to give the same exact exposure for a default "sunny day" hdri, as it does for the same time of day with the vray sun and sky. I made a virtual little gretagmacbeth color chart and used that to tweak the exposure and white balance in the VFB, so that the input and output of the swatches of the chart are the exact same. I ended up with a exposure of 1/425, f/8 @ iso 100 and a custom white balance. I know people might argue this is a stupid exercise. But I did it as just that, an exercise to try to understand more about how we could get more controll over our lighting setups and cameras in relations to textures and other real world input. It turned out to be a quite nice starting point for out archviz projects imho.

I was a bit surprised that the new camera exposes differently and imo has a messier interface, but I will take Vlado's word for that I'll get used to it eventually There's lots of new stuff there that seems nice, but I can't quite get over that Depth of field is labled as "bokeh" with "depth of field" in parenthesis, it should be the other way around I think, or just not say bokeh at all.

Anyway, after some tweaking I can now get the same exposure and white balance as I did with the old camera. But what I cannot get, is my perspective views to render with the same white balance. I can set the EV for non-physical cameras, and that effects the perspective viewports. Even if every camera in the scene has it's own settings, you could always "fly around" in perspective with some middle-ground exposure and wb to check things out and do preview renders.

The Vray Exposure Control was better in this aspect. But maybe this isn't a question for ChaosGroup but rather an Autodesk issue? I would've rather have it be the former, so we could expect some improvements or changes Also the exposure controls in the environment dialog resets when you flip between different controls which is a bit of a pain if you want to flip between controls.

So, I guess this boils down to: is it safe to keep using the old vray phys cam and vray exposure controll in the future? Or will it be phased out? It would be nice to use the new features and set EV-values on the cameras (which is a better workflow for our less technical artists), and be able to preview dof in viewport etc. But... we with realistic turned on all we get is a white viewport when looking through the new physical cameras, until we realised that we needed to manually set the exposure for non-physical cameras to the same value to get a preview of the amount of light. And the old Vray Exposure control doesn't affect the "realistic" viewport in Max 2016 at all.

Sorry if this was a bit of wall of text, but I just had to get this out somewhere


Morne: I don't think we have to worry about our salaries just yet. Things are still very technical, even though software marketing might make our customers think we just press a few buttons and the application does everything for us. And in reality I don't feel that my technical knowledge is what I'm selling to customers. It is just a necessity for me to be able to do all the stuff I'm actually selling.

[Streetwise]

I made a virtual little gretagmacbeth color chart and used that to tweak the exposure and white balance in the VFB, so that the input and output of the swatches of the chart are the exact same.

EXCELLENT idea! Would it be possible to get that? Very good thinking