Render EXR problem

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Render EXR problem

Postby Maskeline » Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:30 am

Maskeline Sat Aug 21, 2021 10:30 am
Hello.
I'm finishing two projects and we have two plans that we can't render....
Both plans have in common that they use mash with many instances (one with about 3.000.000 and the other with about 200.000).
The one with more instances we have done it with orbx.proxy and the one with less in a traditional way (with mash and objects).
In the maya viewer both are rendered and work fine.
When we try to export them to orbx (only camera animation) we see how the memory is filling up until it closes (we are talking about 128GB of memory in a scene that when it is rendering in maya does not exceed 35 Gb). When we have tried with a workstation with more memory (256Gb), there comes a time when it is blocked and does not write anything to disk.
As a workaround we decided to render it directly in maya... But when we launch the render everything goes well except when the file format is EXR... In that case the maya script editor prints the file path... But the file does not exist on the disk!
If we render with another type of file (png for example) everything is perfect.
I have tried to render something very basic (a cube with sun) in exr, and the same thing happens... (attached scene).
We need EXR because it is the only one that handles 32 bits. If I put tiff it doesn't let me choose any bit depth and renders it in 8bits. If I put it in png it works fine... But there are only up to 16 bits...

I have a very tight deadline...
Maskeline
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Re: Render EXR problem

Postby elsksa » Sun Aug 22, 2021 6:40 pm

elsksa Sun Aug 22, 2021 6:40 pm
Hello,

On the matter of EXR: 32-bit (full float) for beauty rendered images is overkill. 16-bit floating point is the standard in productions. One the most important aspect is to differentiate 16-bit integer from PNG, TIFF, etc and 16-bit floating point from OpenEXR. Full float 32-bit EXR is primarily used for data AOVs.

Perhaps, it could be considered to load Filmic by Troy Sobtoka (from his Github page), load the OCIO configuration file in Octane's "color management" preferences and export a 16-bit TIFF with Filmic Log-Encoding-Base applied to it, this will allow you to do the rest in post and the result will still be great.
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Re: Render EXR problem

Postby BK » Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:10 pm

BK Sun Aug 22, 2021 10:10 pm
Maskeline wrote:Hello.
I'm finishing two projects and we have two plans that we can't render....
Both plans have in common that they use mash with many instances (one with about 3.000.000 and the other with about 200.000).
The one with more instances we have done it with orbx.proxy and the one with less in a traditional way (with mash and objects).
In the maya viewer both are rendered and work fine.
When we try to export them to orbx (only camera animation) we see how the memory is filling up until it closes (we are talking about 128GB of memory in a scene that when it is rendering in maya does not exceed 35 Gb). When we have tried with a workstation with more memory (256Gb), there comes a time when it is blocked and does not write anything to disk.
As a workaround we decided to render it directly in maya... But when we launch the render everything goes well except when the file format is EXR... In that case the maya script editor prints the file path... But the file does not exist on the disk!
If we render with another type of file (png for example) everything is perfect.
I have tried to render something very basic (a cube with sun) in exr, and the same thing happens... (attached scene).
We need EXR because it is the only one that handles 32 bits. If I put tiff it doesn't let me choose any bit depth and renders it in 8bits. If I put it in png it works fine... But there are only up to 16 bits...

I have a very tight deadline...


Hi Maskeline,

Thanks for the post!
Would you please make sure to add an active Octane Render Pass from the Octane tab>render settings or from the Octane Panel if you are rendering EXR format?

Also, please check if the Environment variable is using the correct version of Maya Batch, as it may use another project path to save the rendered images.
If this does not work then please share the file here or via pm for us to investigate?

@Elsksa
Thanks so for your suggestion too !!

Cheers
Kind Regards

bk3d
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Re: Render EXR problem

Postby Maskeline » Mon Aug 30, 2021 5:35 pm

Maskeline Mon Aug 30, 2021 5:35 pm
Thank you very much for the answers.
I have an Octane Render Pass enabled and my environment variable is using the correct version of Maya.
I finally found my problem. If I launch the render from the Render>Batch Render command it does not write the EXR, but if I launch the same scene with Render>Render Sequence it works perfectly.
I am a maya user since it started and I have always used the batch render command...
@bk
@Elska
Thank you very much for the suggestion.
We have a pipeline with everything prepared for EXR 32 and each project has its own LUT (most of the time they are vfx projects, where the CG is mixed with filmed images)... And that in the end goes through a color grading room, where the images are touched a lot. As there are many shots and the final output is in 4K-HDR, a slight difference in the workflow makes that in the end we see subtle but important differences in the color room.

Cheers.
Maskeline
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Re: Render EXR problem

Postby elsksa » Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:32 am

elsksa Tue Aug 31, 2021 12:32 am
You are welcome.

The point previously made about 32-bit being overkill, still remains, though. Working myself in (on-set) digital production, post-production and CGI.

16-bit linear scene-referred OpenEXR (in an offline rendering context) is capable of containing more "latitude" than what high-end digital cinema camera sensors are capable and is the standard across many post-houses, besides for data AOVs, as mentioned:

16-bit floating-point color component values are half values have 1 sign bit, 5 exponent bits, and 10 mantissa bits. For linear images, this format provides 1024 (210) values per color component per f-stop, and 30 f-stops (25 - 2), with an additional 10 f-stops with reduced precision at the low end (denormals). Florian Kainz, Rod Bogart, Piotr Stanczyk (Industrial Light & Magic), Peter Hillman (Weta Digital)


3D Look-up-tables have their own known limitations as well, besides some scenarios such as for "show LUTs" or some specific conversion situations for instance, otherwise, "procedural color transforms" are favored.

Cheers.
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Re: Render EXR problem

Postby BK » Tue Aug 31, 2021 5:59 am

BK Tue Aug 31, 2021 5:59 am
Maskeline wrote:Thank you very much for the answers.
I have an Octane Render Pass enabled and my environment variable is using the correct version of Maya.
I finally found my problem. If I launch the render from the Render>Batch Render command it does not write the EXR, but if I launch the same scene with Render>Render Sequence it works perfectly.
I am a maya user since it started and I have always used the batch render command...
@bk
@Elska
Thank you very much for the suggestion.
We have a pipeline with everything prepared for EXR 32 and each project has its own LUT (most of the time they are vfx projects, where the CG is mixed with filmed images)... And that in the end goes through a color grading room, where the images are touched a lot. As there are many shots and the final output is in 4K-HDR, a slight difference in the workflow makes that in the end we see subtle but important differences in the color room.

Cheers.


Hi Maskeline

Thanks for getting back to us.
Glad to know the Render Sequence worked perfectly.

Would you please share that simple scene for us to investigate?
Also, please feel free to reach us at [email protected] for a faster response.

cheers
Kind Regards

bk3d
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