Issues with VRay ZDepth Pass

[mark_payne]

Hi,

I've had this issue with several versions of Cinema 4D so I think it is more of a V-Ray issue. I'm currently using Cinema 4D 2024 and V-Ray 6.

The crux of the issue is that I can't seem to get the ZDepth render pass to work when the 'Depth from Camera' box is ticked in the V-Ray Render Elements settings. The pass just appears entirely black. It works fine when manually using the 'Depth Black' and 'Depth White' settings, but this doesn't give much flexibility in terms of being able to keyframe the clipping planes and using multiple cameras in scenes which require different ZDepth values. I also use VRay with 3ds Max and the equivalent setting in there works absolutely fine with no issues.

Has anyone else had this issue before or knows a fix/workaround?

Thanks in advance.

[zhanet.georgieva]

Hi mark_payne,

When you use Depth from Camera, you disable Depth Black and Depth White and instead, you use camera clip boundaries. This means that you have to enable Near Clipping and Far Clipping in Camera Settings and adjust them accordingly (example).

[mark_payne]

Hi zhanet.georgieva, thanks for your reply! It does indeed work when using the near and far clipping settings, but enabling these settings will actually clip the geometry in the render. In 3ds Max, you keep the clipping planes disabled but the ZDepth pass just references those clipping values. Is there no way to get it to work without having to use clipping planes actually enabled? I don't want my scene to be chopped off by the planes if that makes sense.

Thanks again for your help!

[zhanet.georgieva]

Hi mark_payne,

I understand your concerns. I have logged this for improvement [VCD-2189]. You will be contacted if there are further developments on this matter.

[arcadiano]

Hi zhanet.georgieva, thanks for your reply! It does indeed work when using the near and far clipping settings, but enabling these settings will actually clip the geometry in the render. In 3ds Max, you keep the clipping planes disabled but the ZDepth pass just references those clipping values. Is there no way to get it to work without having to use clipping planes actually enabled? I don't want my scene to be chopped off by the planes if that makes sense.

Thanks again for your help!

I join to mark_payne's request, would be essential using the camera's clipping settings for depth values and keeping the whole geometry in render, without cutting off parts of the scene. For example in an aerial perspective fine tuning the zdepth is really important.
Thanks.

[zhanet.georgieva]

Hi mark_payne and everyone,

I want to share that this improvement has been implemented in our latest stable build. You can download it from HERE.

[arcadiano]

Thanks, really appreciated!