multipass seems not much usefull compared to c4d?

[hotchicken]

I've done some research on this forum and the manual, but find that the multipass is not behaving as I expected...

first, is the shadow channel, which seems to be "inverted". where the dark part is bright and vise versa. even if i invert it in ps, it's still too rough to be usable(i usually tweak the shadow intensity in ps, when rendering with c4d)

second, is i couldn't find the function similar to "object buffer" in c4d, which is that you can specify which object you wanna have a matte/alphachannel. It makes things like changing color much easier.

3rd, the lack of channels like reflection/refraction. hope it's coming in the next release.

4th, might not be a multipass issue, is that i can't find an intuitive way to define the range of depth channel. The numeric control is too much of a try/error process.

the last thing is the possibility to have one psd file with all the info needed.
I've seen in a post that someone said photoshop lacks the ability to handle all the info. However the way c4d handles it works pretty fine for me.(though no 32bit psd with multipass available yet)

those are my questions/wishes about multipass so far. i'll be grateful if someone has some idea about those.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: multipass seems not much usefull compared to c4d?

VfR in general, isn't as set up for multipass rendering as Max and C4D are. I have noticed myself that the shadow layer is rough, but didn't know that it was inverted...I'll try to check and see what kind of control we have over that b/c I'm not too sure about it.

Having an object ID channel is something that we're looking into.

We should have more channels soon.

I could probably put a script or something together that could help with inputing values for the zDepth

I'm not sure who c4d handles psd output, but from my experience, much of the compositors will work with full float data. EXR actually tends to be in higher useage for all of the channels and 32 bit data.

[hotchicken]

Re: multipass seems not much usefull compared to c4d?

Hey dalomar thank you so much for your quick response. I'm really expecting the next release.

the exr files do have all the info, but it's just another extra step to put all the files together in photoshop instead of having a file with everything there with the right composite mode.

by the way, what's the difference between exr and hdr files? the latter tends to have a smaller file size while they're both float point format as far as I know.

thank you again.

[Micha_cg]

Re: multipass seems not much usefull compared to c4d?

... I would prefer a 16bit multilayer psd.

[dalomar_cg]

Re: multipass seems not much usefull compared to c4d?

With VfMax 1.5 you can render a VRImage out to exr that will have all of the channels completely within a single file, so you wouldn't have to combine the layers.

I'm not sure of the complete difference between exr and hdr. I think exr is completely open source and has a bunch of other bells and whistles, such as support for numerous channels and different file writing capabilities. Exrs are more widely supported then hdrs and are generally more favored for compositing programs such as Shake, Nuke, Combustion, and AE (afaik).

[hotchicken]

Re: multipass seems not much usefull compared to c4d?

With VfMax 1.5 you can render a VRImage out to exr that will have all of the channels completely within a single file, so you wouldn't have to combine the layers.

I'm not sure of the complete difference between exr and hdr. I think exr is completely open source and has a bunch of other bells and whistles, such as support for numerous channels and different file writing capabilities. Exrs are more widely supported then hdrs and are generally more favored for compositing programs such as Shake, Nuke, Combustion, and AE (afaik).

thanks a lot!