lens effects like corona?

[themaxxer]

hi chaosgroup

firstly I like vray a lot although all my colleagues have switched to corona for whatever reason.
some days ago I saw some renderings made with corona from a living room with some nice glares in a plastic chair, it made the image so perfect.
for me vray is the best render engine and I want to render with it, but the whole lens effect setup is not good at all, it's an effect and it's difficult to use in order you have to decide how it should look. in my opinion, the renderer should know what to render, how the diffraction looks and how much flares will be visible.
I think this is the only con in vray, everything else is the same or better. I could not make my work without some unique features of vray.
I don't know why in vray the lens effects are render effects, which you have to setup, import your own glare.hdr and diffraction maps, make the masks and so much other stuff. I don't know if it would be difficult to rewrites the whole system like in corona. I work for architects and time frames are often very short so I have to work fast, have no time to setup things - they have to work, and if the renderer can make the work, then yes please. the other thing is I don't know how it looks right! today the user have to decide how the flares are looking, in certain situations this is great, but not in my daily work.

I wish that vray always is the best renderer out there, but the other render systems are more and more flexibel and innovative, so I hope vray will not stay behind... don't take me wrong, I love vray!

so maybe you can rethink the lens effect option and rework it for future releases...

thanks for you great effort and keep it up

themaxxer

[vlado]

There are improvements planned for the lens effects, but not in V-Ray 3.x

the lens effects are render effects, which you have to setup, import your own glare.hdr and diffraction maps, make the masks and so much other stuff. I don't know if it would be difficult to rewrites the whole system like in corona

You do realize it's exactly the same in Corona, right (only without options to do obstacle glare and diffraction)? You still have to decide how you want your lens effects to look.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kosso_olli]

There are improvements planned for the lens effects, but not in V-Ray 3.x

Thanks Vlado, this sounds good. What do you think, can a speedup for the lens effects be expected? Also, can the memory efficiency be improved for large resolutions?

[glorybound]

V-Ray's lens effects is a pain to use. It is slow and doesn't always give good results. Most of the time my cursor gets stuck in one of the fields, so I just jump ship and do things in post. If you haven't used Corona's, it might not be a big deal, but if you have, you get frustrated fast. I look forward to an improvement in V-Ray's lens effects.

[NicoC]

V-Ray's lens effects is a pain to use. It is slow and doesn't always give good results. Most of the time my cursor gets stuck in one of the fields, so I just jump ship and do things in post. If you haven't used Corona's, it might not be a big deal, but if you have, you get frustrated fast. I look forward to an improvement in V-Ray's lens effects.

+1
I'd like to find some time to make a detailed report on the "weird" behavior we regularly face ... but not soon apparently

[themaxxer]

You do realize it's exactly the same in Corona, right (only without options to do obstacle glare and diffraction)? You still have to decide how you want your lens effects to look.

I have not used corona at all, I use vray. I saw some videos and have some information from my colleagues, that's all.

[LudvikKoutny]

There are improvements planned for the lens effects, but not in V-Ray 3.x

You do realize it's exactly the same in Corona, right (only without options to do obstacle glare and diffraction)? You still have to decide how you want your lens effects to look.

Best regards,
Vlado

The results are very different. I've spent quite a lot of time using both, and I can always get them looking right in Corona with just a few clicks, but I've not once had a good result in V-Ray, even after dozens of minutes of tweaking. LensFX look very odd, blurry, hazy. They often skip small areas, highlights that are just few pixels large. LensFX do not have any option to blur glare streaks. LensFX glare size does not scale with the intensity of the light source. Very often, I get a weird jagged edges artifacts along the streaks. LensFX does not have any option for color shift, just diffraction boolean switch without any control.

I've been saving a lot of snippets of movie camera glares from my favorite TV shows and series, and I have them in one folder. With Corona's solution, I can pick pretty much any random image of a glare in my folder, and recreate it easily. With LensFX, it just never looks right. It most of the time does not even look usable, like something you'd want to keep on the final image you hand over to a client or put in your portfolio.

As a bonus, GPU accelerated LensFX are slower than Corona's CPU implementation.

I don't think that themaxxer means he wants one preset he will use on all image, but a solution that won't make you pull all your hair out while using it

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

The results are very different. I've spent quite a lot of time using both, and I can always get them looking right in Corona with just a few clicks, but I've not once had a good result in V-Ray, even after dozens of minutes of tweaking. LensFX look very odd, blurry, hazy. They often skip small areas, highlights that are just few pixels large. LensFX do not have any option to blur glare streaks. LensFX glare size does not scale with the intensity of the light source. Very often, I get a weird jagged edges artifacts along the streaks. LensFX does not have any option for color shift, just diffraction boolean switch without any control.

I've been saving a lot of snippets of movie camera glares from my favorite TV shows and series, and I have them in one folder. With Corona's solution, I can pick pretty much any random image of a glare in my folder, and recreate it easily. With LensFX, it just never looks right. It most of the time does not even look usable, like something you'd want to keep on the final image you hand over to a client or put in your portfolio.

As a bonus, GPU accelerated LensFX are slower than Corona's CPU implementation.

I don't think that themaxxer means he wants one preset he will use on all image, but a solution that won't make you pull all your hair out while using it

i have to agree here unfortunatelly.
vrays controls are a lot more detailed but its very hard to get a good result without loosing hair - i am bald BTW

i am recently using Coronas image editor to give my vray renders a little bit of a pop

This way i am currently using best of the two worlds - Vray vast features and uncompromising quality and Coronas perfectly done tone mapping controls and super easy lens efects

[Jiri.Matys]

I like VRay lens effects actually. There is a lot of controls. One thing I hate is a star which is created with Glare effects, but its so weak that every glow from bloom and from glare completely overrun it.

I post few words in this thread:
https://forums.chaosgroup.com/forum/...or-better-vray

[vlado]

I'm actually curious to do some tests with a real camera and perhaps try to configure the default values for bloom/glare to match that... perhaps it will be useful as a starting point. We'll look into it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[kosso_olli]

One thing I always wondered: Are the settings for the lens effects resolution dependent? The settings working for one scene might by totally worthless for another one, I feel. For speed reasons, I often fiddle around with the settings on the low-res IPR session, and mostly it doesn't look correct in the high res version.

[sherridge101]

I'm actually curious to do some tests with a real camera and perhaps try to configure the default values for bloom/glare to match that... perhaps it will be useful as a starting point. We'll look into it.

Best regards,
Vlado

That would be awesome.
We're rendering automotive shots, and to have accurate bloom and glare as default, would be ace.

[VelvetElvis]

I lost a lot of sleep before I realized that the Vray Lens effects were render size dependent. I had them looking perfectly on my test render settings, but they always looked minimized on my final render and I couldn't figure out why.

[Vizioen]

I lost a lot of sleep before I realized that the Vray Lens effects were render size dependent. I had them looking perfectly on my test render settings, but they always looked minimized on my final render and I couldn't figure out why.

Yeah that's a huge PITA for me too.

i am recently using Coronas image editor to give my vray renders a little bit of a pop

This way i am currently using best of the two worlds - Vray vast features and uncompromising quality and Coronas perfectly done tone mapping controls and super easy lens efects

Could you explain a bit more how you handle this?

Edit: nevermind I found out they literally have an External Frame Buffer. Very handy. Going to test this with some EXRs from Vray

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

Yeah that's a huge PITA for me too.



Could you explain a bit more how you handle this?

Edit: nevermind I found out they literally have an External Frame Buffer. Very handy. Going to test this with some EXRs from Vray

I only started to use it because i could not figure out how to handle LUTs in VFB...later on i found out that you have to untick the srgb button after which the LUT is handled well. Plus the LUT opacity spinner helps too I am sure VFB will get there sooner or later too and i ll roll back to using it again for such things.