Updated to vray 3.60.03 change in frame buffer behavior?

[matthew999]

hello all,

i have updated to the latest vray and have noticed a change in behavior that is a little inconvenient...

When i render out a region in maya using VFB or via deadline using -reg command the saved file is only a crop and not full frame. On previous versions it always used to be full frame so easier for comping in post. I know that on old version of vray if i changed the memory frame buffer from full to none it would do this so i always left on default. Now it seams default also only saves out a crop.

Dunno of this makes a difference but im rendering out multilayer exr.

Is this normal behaviour or am i missing a new button somewhere?

thanks in advance

matt

[matthew999]

i have downgraded to 36002 and its working as expected.... bug perhaps?

[yolov]

I couldn't see anything that could cause this at a first glance looking at our changelogs. Could you share a few examples so we can get a better idea? Maybe we broke something along the way.

[vlado]

There is a change related to that, let me check if it's a bug or intended behavior...

Best regards,
Vlado

[Mihail.Djurev]

In the old version, we did save the whole picture even with region rendering, however only the region part was rendered.
This meant that we used to save whatever (possibly junk) data was in the buffer to the image.

I'm not sure I understand why you need the old behavior. Could you explain your workflow in a bit more detail?

[matthew999]

Hi. I mainly work in high res stills. If retoucher requests an ammend to a wheel or headlight. Rather than render the whole image again i render a region, having the full frame means the retoucher doesnt have to manually allign and can drag the whole image including the black surrounding unrendered frame onto comp and its aligned.

you already have an option to optimise frame buffer memory management, (which stops vray saving out the whole frame) to eliviate any overheads so why change the default option?

[Mihail.Djurev]

Hi. I mainly work in high res stills. If retoucher requests an ammend to a wheel or headlight. Rather than render the whole image again i render a region, having the full frame means the retoucher doesnt have to manually allign and can drag the whole image including the black surrounding unrendered frame onto comp and its aligned.

you already have an option to optimise frame buffer memory management, (which stops vray saving out the whole frame) to eliviate any overheads so why change the default option?

Oh I see. Some people load an already rendered image and use the render region to render on top of it. Then the output is a complete frame, without any black surroundings. Apparently, we broke this workflow between 02 and 03.

We'll probably have a fix for this soon, in the mean time I have a few more questions:

If I understand correctly, you don't load an image, you just need the surrounding black areas of the image for alignment purposes, is that correct?

I'm asking because normally, the data window coordinates we write in the image should be sufficient for alignment. So in theory, the black undrendered part doesn't have to be in the image explicitly. I'd like to know if there's something wrong with how we output dataWindow coordinates, or the receiving software ignores dataWindow coordinates.

[matthew999]

Oh I see. Some people load an already rendered image and use the render region to render on top of it. Then the output is a complete frame, without any black surroundings. Apparently, we broke this workflow between 02 and 03.

We'll probably have a fix for this soon, in the mean time I have a few more questions:

If I understand correctly, you don't load an image, you just need the surrounding black areas of the image for alignment purposes, is that correct?

I'm asking because normally, the data window coordinates we write in the image should be sufficient for alignment. So in theory, the black undrendered part doesn't have to be in the image explicitly. I'd like to know if there's something wrong with how we output dataWindow coordinates, or the receiving software ignores dataWindow coordinates.

Hi,

I normally render in deadline using -reg command, so no option to preload old image and render over it. nice work around for viewport rendering however, i usually like to submit to deadline as this frees up my user license so i can continue to work while rendering.

We use photoshop to retouch and i dont believe it uses data window coordinates unless you know otherwise

Thanks

Matt

[matthew999]

hello,

We have recently upgated to next, and i notice this behavour still exsists which is pretty fundermental to breaking our workflow. any ideas of how to get around this?

[matthew999]

There is a change related to that, let me check if it's a bug or intended behavior...

Best regards,
Vlado

i vlad did you find out wheather this is the exspected behavour we have just updated to next and its still the same.

[yolov]

This should be fixed and I think the fix is included in the 4.12.02 release.

[matthew999]

Hi Yolov,

Im running the above version of vray and it has not changed back to the old behavour is this something you can fix or do we have to change our workflow?

thanks

matt

[yolov]

Ah, probably I forgot to mention how it behaves with the fix and you can try if it works on your end.
Since there were lots of ambiguity in behavior with the region enabled and with setting the data window, to streamline things, now enabling the VFB region determines whether the region or the whole image will be saved when saving from the VFB.
So in brief - if the region is enabled - only the region will be saved.
If the region is disabled - the whole image is saved.
Try disabling the region after rendering and it should work.

[matthew999]

Hi Yolov,

But if i render from deadline outside of maya there is no way to switch of VFB region after a render and save out the image? Also i usually pick up the file that is automatically saved to the maya temp folder. Are you saying that i will make to manually save out within maya VFB after switching of VFB regoins in order to save out the full frame and not the cropped image?

[yolov]

How do things happen when you use deadline?
Is an image loaded into the VFB, and then a region rendered on top?
How does deadline access all of this?