For some elements (for example SourceColor and ZDepth) it would be really useful to be able to specify the background color of the element pass.
just curiuos:
why do you need a background color for a z-depth pass? i cant think of a scenario where i would want this.
But you may want to have control on background colour if you plan to replace background with a photo which already has a blue fog in it. OTOH there is alpha mask for that.
If you need an inverted z pass for some reason, and the background will stay black then you need a way to override that, or if you need a specific value for the background. I agree that it’s absolutely doable in post, but I feel like control over the background color should be there.
I agree that it may not make sense for most people but there are situations where I’d like to have control over it in some pass types.
About the alpha mask - not if you specify that certain objects are not visible in there.
Aaah yes… a simple request turns into a ‘religious’ argument. As it often happens with my requests, they seem to go against the grain and someone from the ‘old-school’ hardcore userbase will try to tell me that (a) my workflow is wrong, (b) there’s no reason to request something because ‘simple-is-awesome’ or (c) no one else has asked for it so the world does not need it.
There could be hundreds of little knobs to add little more control here and there, but then every simple thing could end up like starship control panel.
That’s because starships are meant to go to space… it’s a great thing if you ask me.
Often if you try new piece of software, you can often get quickly intimidated by things that usually aren’t supposed to be there.
So if a MS Paint user gets confused by Photoshop’s UI, it automatically means no one can work with Photoshop.
Flexible means you can always do this exact thing you want yourself using CTexmap element.
Now can i set my background to any color with this pass?
I really try hard to take these replies lighthearted but I have to admit it’s hard. This is just a simple request.
Thanks for taking the time to write that down - I am familiar with all the hacks and yes, they’re all viable ways to achieve that. Here are the reasons why I’ve asked for this in the first place:
Zdepth
I’ve been using VFB+ with its defocus blur. It takes into account the zdepth pass of the renderer - not a different arbitrary pass, so CTexmap, while viable, will not work in that case. I wanted to have a certain value for the background in my render because I didn’t want it to be totally out of focus. That’s what led me to think the easiest solution would be to have a background color swatch in the element properties.
SourceColor
I had to render out presentation material of a painting scheme on a model - without reflections, lighting, shadows etc. The black background was not suitable for a presentation, white would’ve been better, that’s why I requested this… Yes, I ended up doing this in post, but had to sacrifice 1 pixel at alpha border to get rid of the black fringe and some of the outer details were more or less invisible after that. Not a big deal, but would’ve been quicker and prettier if we had a way to specify a color.
As for the user error - you could add a checkbox to enable the BG override. Nothing changes for people who don’t care, the more advanced users would know exactly why they used a BG color and would know about the side effects when inverting etc.
Interface complexity - I guess that automatically grows when a software matures. Yes, we don’t need UI elements to support features from 1990, but when new stuff and requests arise in 2015 there’s maybe nothing wrong about them. For any other plugin that you may or not have used you were probably very happy when simple but effective features were introduced, and they just need to be exposed somewhere in the UI. Complex may end up looking complex and I’m quite sure we’re able to handle that complexity, this is not rocket science.
Sorry about the snarky comments in my earlier post. It’s not personal. There’s just no reason for an argument with every request.
That’s already possible.
I already started implementing this, but then I thought that there is no reason why to do this if we already have alpha channel which is basically what is requested, so there is no need to implement this.