Yes. Though I think it helps to learn the easiest way, get a handle on it, then explore the other options.
I think this is the reason that many people haven’t learned it yet, because they lose the plot when reading the LWF posts, where LWF veterans are discussing only the finer details (which is always fun for us of course), rather than the basic concepts.
Uh, that sounded kind of pedagogical. Sorry.
Really though, at Siggraph and Vismasters this year, I assumed everyone was using LWF, but I discovered this was not the case.
I was completly stumped about the LWF method, so many people with slightly different views and thoughts on the process. The funny thing is, the way I was carrying out my lighting workflow before wasnt that far from it anyway.
So as long as I follow the steps in previous posts it works out fine. I can’t see any reason for using any other variant on the method now that my images look the way I want them to.
That one doesn’t explain “why” you do those things though. Nor why you should/should not use gamma correction for the Vray output.
But better then nothing I guess.
Basically, when Im using my digital SLR outside and I need a shot where the ground and the sky are both exposed correctly, I basically use 2 exposures from the raw image and composite them together in photoshop.
Would I do the same with vray. If im creating an interior scene and expose for inside, it would correctly be overexposed for anything outside..so basically I just lower the exposure or vray camera settings and then composite the 2 together in photoshop. Is this correct ?
Personally, when I’m photographing, I try to get the exposure correct of my subject matter, and all the rest looks turns out however. If I’m focusing on a figure against the sky, I want them to be properly exposed, even if the sky is blownout, and I’ll adjust my light metering mode accordingly, usually spot, or centre-weighted for that.
I would only do the double exposure composite thing if you want to make them look like older arch viz renderings, before we had proper exposure control. In an interior photograph you would normally expect to see the exterior overexposed, with the interior exposed correctly, unless one was focusing on an exterior garden or something.
But, in the end, its whatever looks best, rather than what is photographically correct. Or, as the case may be, what the client thinks looks best…
sure is, but i was referring to steveiouk. I guess you can get a better “non realistic” result with tonemapping then with manually comping two exposures. In less time. If at all i’d say tonemap it in post using lwf+float EXRs.
Can you explain tone mapping, not really sure what that is.
When i was talking about double exposures, i was really refering to what we see with out eyes as oppose to a camera. A cameras exposure is always one or the other..interior with correct exposure…exterior blown out…whereas our eyes see everything with the correct exposure. Thats really what i was refering to.
Right now we are working in a architectural photography methodology. In other words, we’re adjusting our VRay Cam exposure to the most important aspect of the scene, but then saving out to full-float EXR. Then in photoshop we layer it up as two (or more) exposures and mix and match to get what we want. It’s been very successful and is similar in result to what our photographers do.
Tone mapping is to basically map one set of colors onto another. It attempts to take a high dynamic range image and compress it into a low dynamic range picture without loosing any information. So it’s not that far away from rendering two pictures and masking them together, but it’s done with a processing algorithm instead. There are several different ways to do it. several free programs and such. In the versions of Photoshop that supports 32bit pictures you can do it by opening the picture and changing the mode to 8bit.
