Batch renders - histogram / lightmix

[VanWijnenVR]

In the previous V-Ray our workflow to be able to edit the batch renders was to load them from the histogram. With V-Ray 5 and the addition of Lightmix the Histogram files get up to 17GB on a spherical panorama 6000x6000px. I need that resolution for the best result in the Oculus. I think Lightmix couses the files to get so huge, and I'd like to find a way to fix this. I do however need to be able to adjust the lightmix and other corrections in the VFB after the batch is done.

Hope anyone has some advise on a way to either fix this or has a better workflow to be able to what I need to.

[motik]

Hi, I have made some tests but I cannot recover LightMix after batch rendering in any way... Could you kindly explain how have you managed to see it in VFB after batch rendering? Thank you!

[VanWijnenVR]

Hi Motik,

-Make sure you have the LightMix render pass added
-Go to VFB settings > History > set a History Folder and check Auto Save. (Note; since the Histogram files are easily 700Mb for a 4000x2255 render, make sure the Max Size on Disk is set high enough)
-Render your scene
-Open up Max and the VFB
-In the VFB go to file > load image and select the .vrimg you saved with the batch render.

This is what works for me. All the settings I have are fairly standard but I do use Bucket rendering for this. Not sure if that makes a difference. Obviously this workflow is far from ideal, but I haven't found a better one yet. Hope this works for you as well!

[motik]

Tahhnks a lot VanWijnenVR! It works nicely with bucket, it is not working with progressive, anyway clicking the icons in the history tabs keeps loading the entire stack including the lighmix.
Have a great day!!

[VanWijnenVR]

Glad to hear it works! Really hope that there will be a better solution but atleast it works like this

[yavor.rubenov]

Hello,

In the previous V-Ray our workflow to be able to edit the batch renders was to load them from the histogram. With V-Ray 5 and the addition of Lightmix the Histogram files get up to 17GB on a spherical panorama 6000x6000px. I need that resolution for the best result in the Oculus. I think Lightmix couses the files to get so huge, and I'd like to find a way to fix this. I do however need to be able to adjust the lightmix and other corrections in the VFB after the batch is done.

Hope anyone has some advise on a way to either fix this or has a better workflow to be able to what I need to.

LightMix under the hood requires LightSelect render elements and they need to be saved together with the file so that you can adjust the LightMix later on.
The number of those light select render elements depends on the number of lights in your scene and the way you group them (the "Group By" option in the LightMix render element settings) - so you can decrease the resulting file size if you group the lights in fewer groups but then you can't control them individually..

Best regards,
Yavor

[VanWijnenVR]

Hello,



LightMix under the hood requires LightSelect render elements and they need to be saved together with the file so that you can adjust the LightMix later on.
The number of those light select render elements depends on the number of lights in your scene and the way you group them (the "Group By" option in the LightMix render element settings) - so you can decrease the resulting file size if you group the lights in fewer groups but then you can't control them individually..

Best regards,
Yavor

Thanks for the insight Yavor, I'll see what that does in my scene. Since a lot of lights are instances I can definitely group them better. In my list there aren't that many seperate lights to change so it's hard to believe that would make up for around 15GB of the file size (other scenes have about 4-5 groups and are around 1GB, but at 4000x2255 instead of 6000x6000). Can you guestimate if this indeed would reduce the file size by much?

[yavor.rubenov]

LightMix by default is set to group your lights by instances so if you have many instances they should all go to the same light mix. The light selects take 12 bytes per pixel so at 6000x6000 that would be about 400 MB for one light select. However keep in mind that other render elements also take space - f.e if you have denoiser active - it also need some elements, if you have lens effects also..

[VanWijnenVR]

LightMix by default is set to group your lights by instances so if you have many instances they should all go to the same light mix. The light selects take 12 bytes per pixel so at 6000x6000 that would be about 400 MB for one light select. However keep in mind that other render elements also take space - f.e if you have denoiser active - it also need some elements, if you have lens effects also..

Thanks again Yavor, bytes per pixel is useful to know.