Page 1 of 1

Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:11 pm
by russellagro
Hi, I'm posting as I've tried everything from every source I can find to get a successful z pass from C4d Octane without success and am now feeling pretty desperate.

I have adjusted the camera DOF Front blur and Rear blur accordingly as you would with a standard render (octane tag added of course). I then went into render settings and changed the Tonemap Type to "Tonemapped" whilst ticking the Z-Depth box on Info Passes. I select Tiff format at 16 Bit/Channel.

I then go ahead and render. As mentioned in many other posts, I just get a plain white tiff. I thought this would be remedied with the following tip in the official manual: https://docs.otoy.com/#60Extracting%20proper%20z-depth

Unfortunately this just isn't working for me as the "Extractor" effect in After Effects just doesn't find the Z depth pass in the plain white tif. All channels are empty.

I can't find any more information online on what I might be doing wrong so if I'm missing something, any help would be massively appreciated!

Just FYI the AO pass I render at the same time is working perfectly. Also I am on the very latest version of Octane for C4D R18.

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:21 pm
by aoktar
You need to set a proper "Z-depth max" value when you use "tonemapped" in passes. Determine that from InfoKernel.

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:43 pm
by russellagro
Thank you for you quick reply aoktar. I can indeed get something that resembles a depth pass in the LV by increasing the Z-depth max a lot in the Info Kernel. However when I export, the depth pass does not resemble the image shown in the LV.

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 12:58 pm
by russellagro
The only way I seem to be able to get it to render as the gradient is by rendering directly from the Infochannels kernel and having the Z pass as my master image. The Z pass still doesn't work even when I take this approach, it's just plain white

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 1:09 pm
by aoktar
russellagro wrote:The only way I seem to be able to get it to render as the gradient is by rendering directly from the Infochannels kernel and having the Z pass as my master image. The Z pass still doesn't work even when I take this approach, it's just plain white

Use "LINEAR" and EXR with "Multilayer file" option then use Extractor effect in AE to fetch z-depth. And change white point.
a1.jpg

a2.jpg

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 1:58 pm
by russellagro
Thanks again aoktar. Unfortunately this still wasn't working for me...

However, I think I've realised why... I thought you only needed to change the Z-Depth max in the Octane Settings Kernel. Then I saw in your screengrab that you had quite a high number in your render settings option too. So I applied the same number from the kernel (basically using it as a reference to get a nice looking gradient in the LV) and applied into the main octane render settings (render passes tab) and boom, I'm getting what I wanted. Just in case it's of use to anyone else...I am using EXR 32 bit in the render passes tab and tiff 32bit in Regular Image and Multi-Pass Image in the SAVE tab in the main render settings.

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 2:34 pm
by russellagro
I should probably also mention this worked using Image colour profile: Linear and Tonemap type: Tonemapped in the render passes tab

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Mon Sep 19, 2016 2:46 pm
by aoktar
russellagro wrote:I should probably also mention this worked using Image colour profile: Linear and Tonemap type: Tonemapped in the render passes tab

Z-depth-max is effective when you have Tonemap Type=Tonemapped in passes. Otherwise colors will not be corrected by Z-depth-max and color range will be between 0-n values.
Confusion comes due Live viewer use Tonemapped output and Passes are LINEAR by default.

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Tue Oct 11, 2016 1:45 am
by Roboto
Really helpful!

Thanks everyone :)

Re: Can't render a C4D Z pass

PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2016 7:52 am
by zinogino
russellagro wrote:I should probably also mention this worked using Image colour profile: Linear and Tonemap type: Tonemapped in the render passes tab

I set Linear = Linear and Tonemap = Tonemapped and just manual adjust the zdepth with extractor in AE. Does the same thing tho