Glare, Glare Render Element and Deadline

[AndyMurdock]

Creating a Glare Effects result render element works fine as a local render, but Deadline will not create a Glare render element image.

1. Create a scene using Lens Effects: Save Glare Channel ON, Create effectsResult Channel ON
2. Set up for Separate render channels to save this image.
3. Render locally and the result is, as expected: You get an image file of the Glare effect good for compositing.

4. Now send this to Deadline and the result is: Glare will composite onto your rendered image as expected but will not produce that extra Glare Only image file that the local render was able to do.

Am I missing something that would let this happen?
Can we instead have a Render Element that is the effectsResult Channel that Deadline will respect?
What am I doing wrong?

Thanks
Andy
BTW, I really like the Glare results and would use them more if they worked with Deadline. Also, I don't know if anyone is working on Deadline anymore.

[Joelaff]

It can be a pain. I know that saving a monolithic exr or vrimg (not separate render channels) will work. Then you can batch using vrimg2exr to separate the channels in a dependent job. This might require you save to vrimg only, iirc.— which sucks because it is huge.

I have some improved Python scripts for deadline that help with this, but I am heading to a shoot now. If you still need then in a couple weeks I can try to send to you.

I swear I got this glare channel to work before with the separate channels, but it’s been a while. You definitely need to save from the VFB, and disable the Save File in Max ( and uncheck the warning in the sanity check). Of course you need to do all that to save the monolithic (raw) exr or vrimg too.

[zoranm]

Try setting this in Deadline: Job properties/3ds max settings/render output/Enable Local rendering= False

[AndyMurdock]

I tried some of these but no luck. I feel that the glare element file saving needs bit of black magic and luck in order to get it to work. I think this need to be worked out and be extremely clear on how to save the output of the Lens Effects soloed contribution. I think there needs to be a an Effects Result render element that clears up the workflow. It wouldn't be an issue if the Render Effects didn't look as good as it does, I wouldn't bother with it, but it looks great.
These types of glow effects are really expensive at as a 3rd party post effects plugin in After Effects.
Am I missing something?

[Joelaff]

Note that you can post-apply the lens effects using the vdenoise tool (from the command line)

https://docs.chaos.com/display/VRAY4TOOLS/Denoiser+Tool

Search for -lensEffectsParams="filename.vlplfx"

I have never tried, but in theory it works. I am not sure if you can get it to NOT denoise, but only apply the lens effects. Again, I haven't tried, but do intend to, because this would be a good method. You set it up to have frame dependencies in Deadline, so it happens after each frame is rendered.

You can also use the VFB to Batch Process images and it can add the glare. If you enable the effects result channel it seems to write out an EXR with both the original RGB and the Glare channels. So if you use something like Fusion or Nuke you could access those independently (maybe AE can do this-- I don't know. It's a multi-channel EXR). If you don't enable the effects result then it applies the glare to the image itself.

Not sure if this can be scripted or not (and run from Deadline with dependencies), or if there is a way to do it without a GUI license (there probably is using VRay Standalone, which does include the VFB).

[AndyMurdock]

Yes, post lens effects is what I'm doing right now. Simply bring in the exr sequence as a vray texture map, screen map it the background then set up your lens effects and render out the separate glare files. This turns out to be a better solution as I can tweak the lens effects without worrying about render times. The VRay Lens Effects is far superior to any post glow plugin I have found so it's worth the effort. I can also set up a several shots as different texture maps and run them all through the same Lens Effect settings.
Onward.