Detail Choking with Blend Material

[mitchino]

I am rendering some product labels. I build blend materials to define the different inks and finishes on the labels, and create psd masks to use in the blend material amount slots.

I always find that fine detail like type etc gets choked, so say I have a silver label with some type in black ink, I have a sub material for the silver, then a sub material for the black ink, defined by a psd mask in the amount slot. The type gets choked, and I have to thicken up the outlines in Photoshop to get the type to look correct.

Is there something I can do to prevent this happening - it adds an awful lot of extra work.

[mitchino]

So I normally use the bitmap node for the ink masks. I can get a better result by adding a colour correction node and lowering the gamma but it makes the type a bit rough.

I get a better result than that by using an image texture node and lowering the gamma from 2.2 to 1. It's not perfect but will do.

I know the advice is generally to use the image texture node, but it still doesn't support layers in psd files, and saving out multiple files form my layered psd just adds a lot of work.

Is there any chance that one day the image texture node might support layered psd files?

[mitchino]

no one has responded so I'll just ask, might it be possible to update the image texture node so it recognises psd layers?

the job I'm doing has 10 labels with 6 inks each, that means I have to create 60 separate image files for my masks, instead of just 10 layered files - or even 1!

[aoktar]

no one has responded so I'll just ask, might it be possible to update the image texture node so it recognises psd layers?

the job I'm doing has 10 labels with 6 inks each, that means I have to create 60 separate image files for my masks, instead of just 10 layered files - or even 1!

Don't know at the moment

[milanm]

Hi

I saw your topic the moment you posted it, but some topics require writing a book on a public forum to truly explain everything...

So, now that I see that you (somewhat) understand the color space issue I can focus on layers.

Version 4 of Octane (the render engine not the plugin) introduced an option for ImageTexture node to use EXR layers. So that's what should be immediately possible to change by the plugin developers and it should have been there since the first release of V4 BUT IT IS NOT THERE !

Notice the difference in the UI:

That is the closest thing to Photoshop layers with an added benefit that, since you're working with EXR, you avoid any color space ("Gamma") issues, it loads faster than compressed formats and (contrary to popular belief) it can be a significantly smaller file than PSD if you need anything more than 8bit.

In order to save EXR with layers from Photoshop you can use a free ProEXR plugin (there's one for PS and AE and works much better than the older builtin version) from Fnord.

If you want to see what can be added to the plugin, all it takes is a double click on the Standalone app. If you see something that's there but it's missing in the plugin, that can probably be added by the plugin developers. For other things, make a feature request and if it's a good idea I'm sure a lot of people will vote for it.

Also, your textures could use a bit higher resolution (and that's a whole separate book about filtering and sampling etc.)

Cheers
Milan

[mitchino]

Thanks Milan. I've asked about this feature many times, I can't imagine it's that difficult to implement since I can't think of another render engine that doesn't support it.

I'll investigate the EXR option for now.

Re my texture resolution, my final files are A4 at 300ppi, so I use textures that are the same as that output resolution, surely pointless to make them any higher? The attachment was a screen grab at 72ppi - rough.

[mitchino]

Aoktar, just noticed your reply, thanks, at least you didn't say definitely no!

Hope you can pull this off at some point.

[aoktar]

Aoktar, just noticed your reply, thanks, at least you didn't say definitely no!

Hope you can pull this off at some point.

I'll take a look at some time, I don't think that's so easy to integrate in matter of gui.

[frankmci]

Thanks Milan. I've asked about this feature many times, I can't imagine it's that difficult to implement since I can't think of another render engine that doesn't support it.

I'll investigate the EXR option for now.

Re my texture resolution, my final files are A4 at 300ppi, so I use textures that are the same as that output resolution, surely pointless to make them any higher? The attachment was a screen grab at 72ppi - rough.

As a general rule of thumb, texture resolution should be at least 1.5 to 2 x the expected output/display res of the final surface. There's always going to be a bunch of multi-stage re-sampling that goes on with your textures as they work their way down the render pipeline, and there will be some inevitable image quality loss. If you give it a bit more res than you want on the front end, you'll probably get what you actually need.

Queue the Rolling Stones...

[mitchino]

I'm not sure I get the logic, but I'm willing to be persuaded.

Just say my output resolution is 1000 x 1000 px, and I'm rendering a square plane straight on with graphics on it that fills the frame - whether my textures are 1000 x 1000 px or 10,000 x 10,000 px they will surely look the same on the final render.

If I was to use textures at 500 x 500px then they would look rough of course.

Might do an experiment and test this out.