Why can I not save a sequence with lens effects as png with alpha?

[fixeighted]

All I want to do is save a......well, it is in the title.
Am I going completely mad....did I miss an email or some announcement where it said this was a really stupid thing to need?
Why is this just not seemingly possible?

Can you make it possible please?

As I see it, the only way to do this is needing exr output, saved from various sections of the interface in a totally non-intuitve manner, needing further comping to get a suitable sequence.
This really annoys me, as it should be a simpler process.
Even doing it this way means I, for some reason, get a different combined output from what I see in the vfb. The lens effects are just not as they are in the vfb....any explanation for this?

The process is confusing, at least for me. The documentation is lamentably non-existent and given how it is such a crucial feature then I am more than a little bit disappointed.

Maybe it's just me? Maybe everyone else has this totally figured out?

If so, please please let me know how

[yavor.rubenov]

Hello,

Not exactly sure what is the issue - can you elaborate or give some example scenes? I tried saving from a very simple scene and everything seems correct:



Best regards,
Yavor

[hermit.crab]

I presume the alpha channel is applied upon saving the .png, hence why you don't see the lens effects. Try disabling it (Separate render channels>Open file browser>Select .png >Setup>PNG Configuration>Alpha channel tickbox).

[fixeighted]

Ok, so the glare works with a png if subsequently I ignore it in e.g. AE for that layer only, then set it to add.
Bear in mind that in this example I want the alpha in all layers, so necessarily I set the output as alpha checked, not as in your examples which assume a solid background.
It wasn't obvious, to be honest, and this very simple procedure is not documented anywhere....literally nowhere that I could find, hence my frustration.
Please point me to it if it does in fact exist and I somehow missed it. I can then pin it for when I forget next time

[leejk]

No it does not exist that I can find either. I have the same frustration with the new layers feature. No where is it documented on how to use these with animation, no where. And if are needing to save EXR files, like for use in the denoiser tool, there apparently is no way to simply bake the lens effect into the RGB channel and be done with it. But the part of it that is most non-intuitive is the fact there is no "save current layers to output frames" or in the VRay output a checkbox that says "save current VFB layers to output"..

[hermit.crab]

And if are needing to save EXR files, like for use in the denoiser tool, there apparently is no way to simply bake the lens effect into the RGB channel and be done with it.

You can bake the Lens Effects in a separate element through the "Create effectsResult channel". You can also apply Lens Effects through the Denoiser Tool.

But the part of it that is most non-intuitive is the fact there is no "save current layers to output frames" or in the VRay output a checkbox that says "save current VFB layers to output"..

There's a "Save VFB Color Corrections to RGB channel" in the V-Ray Raw image file output menu. Check screencap.

[leejk]

Thanks for pointing that out... I had looked in the docs there but obviously overlooked that setting.
Could I make a suggestion? In normal single image creation workflow, having the layers there in the VFB makes perfect sense, but when rendering an animation, especially if using a render pass manager and render farm, the VFB is not the logical place to think about layers. So it seems weird that in order to render animation on the farm, I have to first render an image, then apply the layers to it, and leave it open while I submit renders to the farm. Yes it works, but the workflow is not intuitive IMO. When using a render pass manager, it would be nice to load different layer states for different passes, but I think as it is I would have to pre-load the VFB each time, correct?

[vladimir_krastev]

Hi with animation rendering it makes more sense to have the Lens effects as separate render element and add in post production in my opinion.

[bouhelal_omar]

I spended hours trying to understand how to export the Lens Effect for an animated sequence and i still not figure out How separatly from the image Its seems impossible with EXR files ... Possible through the V ray frame Buffer Save all images to separate Files But is there a way to export an entire PNG sequence as separate File ? It is realy difficult to find a simple procedure and simple answer to that i struggle on it since 5 years ....

[^Lele^]

I spended hours trying to understand how to export the Lens Effect for an animated sequence and i still not figure out How separatly from the image Its seems impossible with EXR files ... Possible through the V ray frame Buffer Save all images to separate Files But is there a way to export an entire PNG sequence as separate File ? It is realy difficult to find a simple procedure and simple answer to that i struggle on it since 5 years ....

V-Ray render settings, V-Ray tab, Frame Buffer rollout, at the bottom: