VFB as a standalone application

[ValeroStudio]

I'd love to see the VFB as a standalone application, that is accessed via Photoshop plugins. The way I envision it is a way I can open an EXR right from my cloud account in Photoshop, adjust my lightmix settings, tweak exposure and denoiser settings, etc. and then have that EXR open as a Smart Object in Photoshop that I can always go back and adjust those settings again in the VRay Frame Buffer inside of Photoshop.

[Peter.Chaushev]

Hello, Matthew,
Thank you for this request!

If you are not familiar with Chaos Player, please visit https://www.chaos.com/player .
We are also working on things that may overlap with the functionality you laid out.

Could you please go into a bit more detail about how you imagine your ideal workflow? Let's say you've completed an arch-viz project and would like to retouch some of the output (with/without PS) before sending it over to a client or after they've provided you with feedback.
What kind of editing you want to have easy access to and how do you feel would be the most comfortable way to make adjustments in regards to your time?
Can you describe this step-by-step or simply reminiscence over an old work and explain how what you imagine could have helped you most?

kalina.maneva is also curious for ideas on this topic and may be able to answer any of your subsequent questions in more detail.

Kind regards,
Peter

[ValeroStudio]

For me and my workflow, I would like to be able to open Photoshop, then be able to access my Chaos Cloud account or open an EXR directly via a VFB plugin, accessed through the plugins menu in Photoshop. Then I would modify exposure, white balance, and maybe even tweak some of the Light Mix settings in this plugin. It would look and feel similar to the Camera Raw editor in Photoshop. Then I would click a button and the image I have modified opens as a Smart Object and I would like to see a dialog asking if I would like to create any layers from the channels in the EXR file, such as Material ID. These would be placed in a folder. At any time if I wanted to modify the exposure again, let's say, I would double-click the smart object and go back into the VFB window, make those adjustments (with the ability to save out and load .vfbl files as well), then click OK and go back to Photoshop to modify my background, add some adjustment layers or material edits and maybe pop in entourage over the image. Technically this can be done now but I would love to be able to have it all right there in Photoshop directly.

I have seen Player but it might be more robust than I am looking for, especially for just still images.

[stevesideas]

Hi there. I hope it's okay to continue this thread. I just tried out Chaosplayer for the first time in the hope it would load all the VFB settings including lightmix but it doesn't. It only seems to load the basic VRIMG file with no adjustments. Is there no way to adjust the VRIMG file with all adjustments in the stack and light mix outside of 3dsmax? The problem being that I have a render going now on my main machine and so cannot adjust anything without opening another version of max to access the VFB. It's quite heavy just for editing.

[ValeroStudio]

There is a workaround discussed in this post that works well.

https://forums.chaos.com/forum/v-ray...2-vrimg-editor

[konstantin_chaos]

The idea of having a standalone VFB is being discussed internally.
I can't share more at this stage.

[stevesideas]

The idea of having a standalone VFB is being discussed internally.
I can't share more at this stage.

Standalone VFB with ability to utilise a VRIMG sequence and animate all aspects of the layers would be ideal