Automatically split vrimg layers to seperate EXR's

V-Ray for 3ds Max V-Ray for 3ds Max :: General
1

Hey,
I recently had to render some really huge images with 20k resolution and a lot of multimattes and render elements. Reached the ram limit of course, so I would like to render to a single vrimg and disable the framebuffer to save ram. I know that the vrimg can be converted to a multilayer EXR using the vrimg2exr tool, but unfortunately I need every render element as a single EXR. This is also possible with vrimg2exr, but you have to do that by hand using command line for every element. Is there an automated way to save out the single elements of the vrimg?

Regards

Oliver

2

I use this: http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/convert-vrimg-to-exr

works really well. Can take up to 30 mins per vrimg file to convert depending on file size but it gets there and is very easy to use.

3

Thanks a lot, will try it!

4

It might be useful to play with the -bufsize option to allow vrimg2exr to use more memory for the conversion.

Best regards,
Vlado

5

Vlado, could you please explaint that a little more? Would like to try that.

6

Is there a better, quicker, more up-to-date GUI for using vrimg2exr?

Generally speaking, we always render to vrimg files these days, and they contain either basic elements or lots of multimattes and elements. I have been using the above linked script for a while now, but it has always been slow. I’m not really sure how to improve its speed. I know when you are manually using vrimg2exr, you can change the buffer size, but I don’t think this GUI respects that (or does it?). Lately, I have been having problems with this script - I will try a reinstall of it and see what happens, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to try and find something better/quicker.

What I would like is a script/routine that automatically saves out the EXRs from the VRIMG file upon render completion. Is this too much to ask? I know there is the option in the render settings dialog box to save seperate render channels, but this is only available when you are displaying the memory frame buffer. With high res renders, we usually don’t do this because of the ram useage in using the VFB (we use the preview instead).

Failing this automation, does someone know of a script or method with a friendly, easy to use GUI that is faster?

7

Hm, it might be relatively easy to script something with a post-frame callback, will have to think about that.

On a side note, maybe not quite useful for you, but Brendan Bolles (the author of the ProEXR plugin for PhotoShop) now has a version of ProEXR that can open .vrimg files directly in PhotoShop.

Best regards,
Vlado

8

I think it does actually- just edit the file that is in same directory as the script. Pretty sure it worked for me.

Vlado: vrimg directly to Photoshop will be fantastic - but I couldn’t see anything on the fnord site: any idea when that might be available?

9

+1 for that! Thanks Vlado!