OTOY Forums

I've narrowed a few things down - the alpha transparency settings are all working fine and as expected when rendered locally with the latest studio plugin 2024.1.2 (live viewer / picture viewer) giving nice clean results...

The main issue I'm experiencing is when I export anything for the Render Network (using the Render Network Wizard to package the C4D file), rendering 2025.0.2, 2024.5.1 and 2023.2.2... all give me the same visible edge, instead of nice clean transparency.

Works OK with an ORBX file export (to the Render Network), but I've been using the export wizard for animation files recently, as it's been great to handle a larger amount of frames and creates smaller packaged file sizes etc.

I think the issue is actually the 'Render Network Wizard' is not exporting properly and gives this visible alpha edge.
(Render.Network_Wizard_C4D_v1-03)

I am trying to find out if there is a way to use the new open Denoiser node on a Shadow and Light pass to denoise them ?

I looked at the image in this post and do not see how I hook up this feature to get the passes that are currently not denoised.... denoised :>)

Thanks

Peter

Hi.

@m0dm0d:
the issue with render network is that it is currently based on 2024.1 SDK, while the denoised alpha fix has been introduced in 2024.1.1 SDK, so it is not available on render network yet.
Please try to render your scene with 2023.1.3 version on render network and report back, thanks: @Peter:
nice to hear back from you
About new Open Image denoiser and AOVs, please have a look at here:
viewtopic.php?f=30&t=83664#p433908

ciao,
Beppe

Thanks @beppe

I also raised this with Render Network support yesterday (request 280783) and they've been looking into the issue.

I can see a new version has been added to the network options overnight (2025.1.1), so I’ve just tested the 2025.1.1 setting with my existing file (from C4D 2024.4.1).

I can only see 4 options in my Render Network settings (see below - I tested the previous 3 yesterday with same transparency results).

2025.1.1 is still having the same issues for me (with darker alpha edges on output) using Render Network Wizard 1.03.
Job ID: fc148a9e-bed4-4614-8483-1186cf4be30f

I’m waiting to test an ORBX export from the same file, which I believe will produce the correct transparency results, as it did with a different test yesterday (although not a viable workflow for me, as my ORBX file size is very large (even zipped) versus 280mb from the wizard export file). Currently processing Scene ID: 7e46e8cc-cb5f-4eff-8992-83594d2f29ae

I’ve just installed C4D version 2025.1.2, with studio plugin 2024.1.2, Render Network Wizard 1.03, but unfortunately using RNDR 2025.1.1 setting, I'm still getting the same alpha edge issue. Job ID: dbfbfef9-f84b-4fec-828b-7894609dec22

With the ORBX file exported from studio plugin 2024.1.2, I get the full scene options you listed previously and this renders with a perfect alpha using 2024.1 SDK. Job ID: ea5c5860-e675-472b-89f1-8669001db0e6

Issues with the alpha edges when using the Render Network Wizard 1.03.

This has now been resolved (many thanks to Dan, for the weekend customer support).

Alpha transparency is working correctly via Render Network, with C4D files (exported via Render Network Wizard 1.03) and rendered as EXR output.

Any issues with the darker alpha edges are only visible if PNGs are selected as the output.

My confusion came from ORBX rendering PNGs correctly, but C4D not.

m0dm0d wrote: Any issues with the darker alpha edges are only visible if PNGs are selected as the output.
My confusion came from ORBX rendering PNGs correctly, but C4D not.

PNG is only a viable format if the exported render is intended for a web upload, no post production and transparency is necessary (most common case, a logo, when SVG is unsupported).

In the other case (involving post production), PNG is unsuited as the render data can't be properly encoded (it's limited to non-linear closed domain encoding) does not support associated alpha, is not floating point, not optimized, and the list goes on.

Given VFX/CGI is more often than not going through a post-production round-trip, PNG is (should be) non-existent. For any no-transparency-needed cases and no-post, TIFF, EXR, JPG are the three well supported formats that are more suitable, each for their own use-cases.

Something to be aware of when it comes to choosing a file format.