OTOY Forums

Hi all,

With the 2.10 release we asked for feedback about render passes. So far we got a lot of useful feedback, thanks for that! Since the release thread is getting a bit longish I'm moving further discussions here (but let's keep bug reports in the original release thread).

What I'm taking away from the discussion so far is:

• We haven't nailed down exactly how the beauty passes should be done. Some users commented that the specular and the reflection pass look weird. In OctaneRender a reflection means basically everything (diffuse, specular or glossy reflections). I assume users want more fine grained control in this area. The render passes we have in 2.10 allows you to composite the main render in 3 different ways:
  
  

  

  
  
  Maybe we should go away from having 3 mutually exclusive work flows. I guess more fine grained passes allows for better control in post. Maybe something like this:
  
  

  

  
  
  Engines like V-RAY allow for almost everything as a separate pass but if we would do something like that we would lose some performance. We're looking for a set of passes that covers most cases but doesn't kill our speed. So putting down your list of 50 must have render passes wouldn't help us anything.
  
  Are you guys using the raw and filter (or colour) combinations to for example give reflections or refractions a different colour in post?
  
• There's need for a motion vector pass to do motion blur in post.
  
• Improved object mask by assigning a pre-configured alpha value to an object (e.g. via the the object layer map). I'm still a bit confused to what I'm exactly looking at in the daisy and bottle example (BorisGoreta or FrankPooleFloating, could you annotate the pictures a bit for me?) What adds more to the confusion is having an improved matte since this is something we configure on a material, not on an object. There was also talk of having configurable colour masks I assume that would be an alternative solution to this problem?
  
  Is it something like this you want as output?
  
  

  

  
  
• Support for OpenEXR deep data as described here. This requires more investigation so that's something we'll work on after we finished all the render passes stuff.
  
• Lighting layers, this was already on our road map (not necessarily for 2.1x) but it seems that there's more interest in deep data compositing so we might do deep data first in favour of this one.
  
• A pass is needed to capture shadows.

Any comments are welcome.

cheers,
Thomas

Just my personal opinion, but I think lighting layers would benefit a larger number of people than deep image support. I don't know too many outside of VFX that are using deep images in comp, but most disciplines could find a real use out of individual lighting passes - especially your archviz and product viz customers. Just as a priority thing, not either/or.

stratified wrote:[*] Improved object mask by assigning a pre-configured alpha value to an object (e.g. via the the object layer map). I'm still a bit confused to what I'm exactly looking at in the daisy and bottle example (BorisGoreta or FrankPooleFloating, could you annotate the pictures a bit for me?) What adds more to the confusion is having an improved matte since this is something we configure on a material, not on an object.

My only issue now is the objectid. Surfaceid seems ok for now in octane. I haven't checked if the two id types are readable by AE via IDmatte.

I need the ability to manually set objectid as an option, maybe via nodes through lw nodes, even if they deal with materials maybe its the only way to have object id in lw properly.
Reason is my post here viewtopic.php?f=33&t=42564&start=100.
The objectiid is set randomly which is not good for using as masks.

I don't use black and white masks anymore, well only in lw like that black and white shown above.

Anyway here's a better explanation
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/aftereffect ... n_pt2.html

I dont quite understand what they are. Is it just to disable features of the renderer? Rendering something without gloss? I'm confused.

Thomas, it looks like your example is what we want - but turning on the first ball would help determine this. I'm assuming you made this in Octane and not PS... (Though, I might scream if this was just a couple lines of code you had to pop in to add this feature... that we have been begging for.. so very long now....)

If this must be an object layer (surface) property, so be it. I just know (full) object property would have been better for me, personally. But keep in mind that me and Boris (specifically - there are many of us that want masking) want our masking objects to completely affect the scene in every other way (not just cast shadows)... but I assume that combined with other visibility options, we should be able to have full control - provided we can just flip on Mask/Zero Alpha - regardless of Cast Shadows, Invisible to Camera settings etc...

There was also talk of having configurable colour masks I assume that would be an alternative solution to this problem? Let's just focus on zero alpha ability for now. It will be easier that way. I think what they were talking about was ability to have matte/mask respect the opacity values... maybe revisit that after we know we have true masking ability.

Maybe you should rename the current Matte feature to Shadow Catcher...

voon wrote:I dont quite understand what they are. Is it just to disable features of the renderer? Rendering something without gloss? I'm confused.

Added
http://cgi.tutsplus.com/tutorials/3d_cg ... n--cg-5991


Its for masking out object
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/aftereffect ... n_pt2.html

So you can apply effects to only specific parts of your render, making total revision on only part of it, etc.

geo_n, I think voon was referring to passes, not matte/mask stuff.

Yes, objectID etc can be used in compositing and gives a lot of power... however, myself, Boris et al, want/need this feature regardless. Masking should be an easy feature to add (maybe it was just added when Thomas did that above?) and elimate jumping through a butt-load of hoops to get a 32bit of exactly what we want. Hopefully in the 2.x cycle, we will all have a ton of options and be able to do exactly what we want, how we want, regardless of workflows or personal methods...

FrankPooleFloating wrote:Yes, objectID etc can be used in compositing and gives a lot of power... however, myself, Boris et al, want/need this feature regardless. Masking should be an easy feature to add (maybe it was just added when Thomas did that above?) and elimate jumping through a butt-load of hoops to get a 32bit of exactly what we want. Hopefully in the 2.x cycle, we will all have a ton of options and be able to exactly what we want, how we want, regardless of workflows or personal methods...

Actually I don't know exactly what you want from that pic with the balls. Can you explain?

geo_n, if you have never tried rendering with Matte feature, and mystified why the alpha had shadows in it, I don't know what to tell you... Many of us are working in completely different realms and have unique needs. But please just take my word for it that many have been asking for this, for about two years. You will surely have the option to not use it.

FrankPooleFloating wrote:geo_n, if you have never tried rendering with Matte feature, and mystified why the alpha had shadows in it, I don't know what to tell you... Many of us are working in completely different realms and have unique needs. But please just take my word for that many have been asking for this, for about two years. You will surely have the option to not use it.

Do you mean the matte checkbox in lw material node? Its wrong terminology afaik.
That checkbox is a shadowcatcher function. What does that have to do with obj/mat id?