Normals Pass - Still Wrong?

[sszyszka]

In the following thread Vladimir mentions that the normals pass output is incorrectly implemented. This was over a year ago, any updates on this?

http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...p+pixel+values

My normals passes continue to look wrong as shown below, they ignore the "remap pixel values" checkbox and they look no better when I turn off sRGB in the VFB.

Any suggestions?



Thanks,

-Seb
http://sebastianszyszka.com

[pixelwerk]

Well, the normal pass isn't wrong, but it's usually a 32bit-channel. The remap-pixel value from MODO just makes it fit into the normal 8bit color-range.

So far I'm still using this workaround in Photoshop when opening the EXR:


(sorry, my photoshop is running in german, but it's under Image -> Adjust -> exposure).
The result is exactly the same like when checking "remap pixel values" in Photoshop

[boyan]

Hey Seb,

Thank you for the post. The issue is existing. I will keep you posted.

BR Boyan

Update : Thank you Pixelwerk for a workaround.

[sszyszka]

Thank you both!

Pixelwerk, you're a lifesaver. I played with exposure a lot, but never arrived at the values you provided. Thank you. The reason I called the output "wrong" was because I could find no effective way to bring back the detail past the mid-point of each channel. Only the first half of the frame contained normals data, the rest would prematurely go to black. Thanks to you I not only have usable VRay normals but can also avoid having to remap the pixels values in modo.

In hindsight, it might be helpful to add the above exposure settings to the documentation's normals section. I know it's PS-specific, but I know I'm not the first one to struggle with this and finding the solution has not been easy.

-Seb
http://sebastianszyszka.com