my favorite compositing tool is now available as a downloadable trial to anyone who signs up!
i use this with vray every day and now you can see the power of vray’s exr saving because nuke deals very well with vray’s channels.
enjoy!
and for some seriously shameless self promotion, you can get training materials here
Awesome tip, thanks very much! Never used Nuke before and very curious about it. I haven’t researched this yet or got the download link, but do you know how the demo is limited? Time/Feature/save disabled?
Thanks again!
from the readme :
The NUKE demo version lets you explore the various features of the application.
It is configured differently than the full licensed version. Please note the
following differences:
• Full licensed versions of NUKE are available for Windows, Linux/IRIX, and
Macintosh OS X. However, the free downloadable demo version will install
only on Microsoft Windows computers.
• These TCL commands are disabled: tcl_load, exec, and open.
• Certain knob values accessible in expressions and using TCL commands
are encrypted.
• External binary plugins are neither loaded nor run. Nuke is normally capable
of loading and running plugins in the form of compatible binary files
placed in its plugins subdirectory. Nuke can dynamically identify these plugins
on launch. In the demo version of NUKE, all plugins normally bundled
with NUKE are compiled into the NUKE executable.
• FrameCycler is not available in the demo version of NUKE.
• The demo version does not allow users to save a script.
• The demo version does not allow users to copy and paste nodes outside of
the current project file.
• 3D texture maps, 2D images in the Viewer, postage stamps, and written
images are randomly speckled with color pixels. The more you process
these maps and images, the more colored pixels will be added to the displayed
image. The pattern varies from frame to frame of an image
sequence.
• Output (image Write) size is limited to 640 x 480 pixels. Writing a larger file
only saves the lower 640 x 480 region of pixels of the output image.
I am trying it!
However I am having problems with the workflow EXR2NUKE.
When u use render elements from vray and export as EXR, i find they come out all black. Plus, EXR provides its own channels, like zbuffer or renderid. How are they connected with vray render elements? Should we check them too or it should be done through VRAY entirely?
Thanks!
currently you have to do it via seperate sequences as the exr implementation is incredibly flakey and stupid in max. if zou get all black frames, you have some settings wrong in the exr export settings.
Thorsten
This should be in the Off-Topic forum not in general as it has nothing to do with vray directly.
And also
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=16002&highlight=nuke
And what about exr own channels? are they useless?
in max they are…because autodesk just bought splutterfish’s plugin wich sucks…when written properly they rock
Thanks for your help!
Do u think it could be possible to create a kind of script in nuke to arrange all vray channels properly automatically based on the layer name? I mean, when the script sees a reflection layer, it knows it must be added and not multiplied, for example…
P.S. : Got the black renders sorted, changed the compression method inside exr parameters and it´s working…now to nuke! 
well would of course be possible…but as pointed out in another thread the elements that have to be multiplied dont work properly in postpro. And all other elements have to be added not multiplied.
Thorsten
yeah i am aware of that problem. It kinda becomes a limitation but i guess with the current set of render elements we’ve got a pretty decent array of post possibilities. I rarely need that degree of flexibility anyway, just only for commercials, maybe…
the way i handle the automation is to create a gizmo in nuke.
a gizmo is a script that is loaded at script load time and contains other nodes (a group) that tell nuke what to do.
so yes, i have standardized exr layers and this gizmo puts them together properly without me having to do it again ang again each time.
the exr you want is the vrimg file converted to exr using chaos’ utility that comes with vray. it works very very well and we use it without fail daily.
doesnt work for me, nuke reports “bounding box is 0 or negative” when i try to open a vrayimg converted to exr…any pointers ?
Thorsten
that’s very odd. are you using rc2?
are yuo using the vrimg2exr converter form that build ?
any switches you are using?
rob
tried with no switches and with different ones…but to no avail, error stays the same. i tried using rc2 and 3 and the matching converters…nukeversion is 4.5.21
Thorsten
damn, i cannot reproduce this problem.
i have been using the vrimg stuff for a long time too so i would know if this was messed up.
odd. need to look into it again then. does vrimg saving also solve the premultiplication problem ? or do you restrict to not use the raw passes?
Thorsten
I guess rendering to vrimg and then extracting the channels would be about the same as rendering to multiple EXR channels from vray frame buffer section, wouldn’t it? Plus you avoid that extra step converting files…I understand vrimg is better when dealing with hires stills, due to the amout of ram u save, but i dont see the benefits rendering an animation…
the converted exr is ONE exr per frame with all the channels integrated.
Thorsten
Uhmm i didnt know nuke was aware of that. As a combustion user, im used to rpf, and this format can’t contain layers, only integer channels. So ur telling me nuke will let u separate a reflection layer for ex, from a single exr file? Like a kind of super PSD?