Render passes stack

[Oleg]

Hi all, how correctly use Render Passes for compositing? I know almost everything except a few things:

— how to use both Lights passes and a Beauty? Because when I use Lights, I put all of them above the Ambient light on Add blend mode and everything is good. But when I try to put a beauty pass above the picture becomes too bright of course. So how to blend it correctly? Let's say I want to play with lighting and reflection and refraction at the same time.

[stratified]

Hi,

You can't combine light passes and beauty passes. They are 2 different ways of breaking down the beauty pass in distinct components and when all combined you'll have the beauty pass with twice the brightness.

cheers,
Thomas

[linvanchene]

Hi,

You can't combine light passes and beauty passes. They are 2 different ways of breaking down the beauty pass in distinct components and when all combined you'll have the beauty pass with twice the brightness.

cheers,
Thomas

Your tutorials were extremely helpful to udnerstand how passes work.

Still I wonder how confusing this all may be for new users?

Suggestions:

Why not add an additional "master" toggle for
- beauty passes
- light passes

If the user clicks on the master toggle all the individual passes are automatically added.

Basically even if new users do not yet fully understand what each pass does they have an easy way to just add those passes that can be combined.

For familiar users this still offers the benefit of saving some seconds and energy selecting all those passes needed at the same time.

- - -

A similar option could be added when saving.
The user selects the main project output file folder and the main file name.

Options could be added to automatically
- save discrete beauty image files in a sub folder named filename_BEAUTY
- save discrete lighting image files in a sub folder called filename_LIGHT

Alternatively
- beauty passes are saved to a separate exr (hopefully in the future .psd) as filename_BEAUTY
- light passes are saved to a separate exr (hopefully in the future .psd) as filename_LIGHT


Basically when saving the sofware has a look at what kind of passes the user selected and offers assistance in saving those out.

Of course this is all optional.
Some users may prefer to
- have all passes in just one folder or file.

- - -

Color Codes:

Instead of having all the tabs below the viewport in the same default UI Tab color why not

give passes that can be composited together shared UI tab colors?

Example:
default UI tab color - not part of a composition
blue - all beauty passes
red- all light passes

The different colors could give new users an indication which passes can be composited together.

[itsallgoode9]

really wish there was a toggle like this. octane has about 10 billion passes, which is great for flexibility due to the amount of options you have but is a little cumbersome/confusing for people not familiar with passes due to the amount of them.

[stratified]

Hi,

You can't combine light passes and beauty passes. They are 2 different ways of breaking down the beauty pass in distinct components and when all combined you'll have the beauty pass with twice the brightness.

cheers,
Thomas

Your tutorials were extremely helpful to udnerstand how passes work.

Still I wonder how confusing this all may be for new users?

Suggestions:

Why not add an additional "master" toggle for
- beauty passes
- light passes

If the user clicks on the master toggle all the individual passes are automatically added.

Basically even if new users do not yet fully understand what each pass does they have an easy way to just add those passes that can be combined.

For familiar users this still offers the benefit of saving some seconds and energy selecting all those passes needed at the same time.

- - -

A similar option could be added when saving.
The user selects the main project output file folder and the main file name.

Options could be added to automatically
- save discrete beauty image files in a sub folder named filename_BEAUTY
- save discrete lighting image files in a sub folder called filename_LIGHT

Alternatively
- beauty passes are saved to a separate exr (hopefully in the future .psd) as filename_BEAUTY
- light passes are saved to a separate exr (hopefully in the future .psd) as filename_LIGHT


Basically when saving the sofware has a look at what kind of passes the user selected and offers assistance in saving those out.

Of course this is all optional.
Some users may prefer to
- have all passes in just one folder or file.

- - -

Color Codes:

Instead of having all the tabs below the viewport in the same default UI Tab color why not

give passes that can be composited together shared UI tab colors?

Example:
default UI tab color - not part of a composition
blue - all beauty passes
red- all light passes

The different colors could give new users an indication which passes can be composited together.

We are trying to update the manuals as fast as we can. Granted, everything for the render passes isn't there yet but we're getting there. I think it's better to have a deeper understanding of the render passes than to have a master switch. The dangerous thing with a master switch is that if you tick it, all of the sudden your GPU goes out-of-memory and your renders fail. Second, for a lot of scenes, most of the passes will be black which is a waste of VRAM.

Regarding the compositing and knowing how to combine what - we understand the problem and we're working on solutions to make user's life easier...

cheers,
Thomas

[riggles]

It could be worse. We could be using Renderman and have to learn all of their different AOVs. Of course, you first have to learn what an AOV is.

I'm a fan of making things user friendly and accessible, which benefits new users and pros alike. I think most of this could be accomplished with better UI grouping of passes that go together. That would also be easiest to implement in the plugins as well. I'm not sure how much benefit a master beauty passes switch would create for new users, since those passes are useless without them knowing how to composite them together. Either way, new users need documentation to cover those bases. Which is why good documentation of the passes system is the most important thing.

[linvanchene]

I think it's better to have a deeper understanding of the render passes than to have a master switch. The dangerous thing with a master switch is that if you tick it, all of the sudden your GPU goes out-of-memory and your renders fail. Second, for a lot of scenes, most of the passes will be black which is a waste of VRAM.

Regarding the compositing and knowing how to combine what - we understand the problem and we're working on solutions to make user's life easier...

cheers,
Thomas

All very valid points. I do agree that in the long run there is no way around to just get that deeper understanding.

And thank you Thomas for the additional insight.

I did not yet realize that if I render out a black / empty pass it will still use some VRAM.

I did that all the time especially when I was not sure if there is going to show up something after the noise clears up at 1000+ spix.



It has become standard procedure to toggle on both beauty and light passes to be on the safe side.

It is only after the passes have rendered a certain number of samples that I can judge if in that specific case

- it is possible to edit the beauty passes because transmission is to strong
- it is possible to edit the light passes because one light source is too strong in some areas
- it might be best to adjust some Octane settings and restart the render

Guess I was just lucky that I had enough spare VRAM so far.

[itsallgoode9]

yeah, i think i meant more groupings rather than just turning them all on with a master switch.

while we're talking about render passes, I just need the reflection separated while all the other passes can be in one pass. Is this possible? Right now I have to turn on and combine like 5 or 6 layers whereas I just really need two: 1-All Reflections, 2-Everything else.

[stratified]

yeah, i think i meant more groupings rather than just turning them all on with a master switch.

while we're talking about render passes, I just need the reflection separated while all the other passes can be in one pass. Is this possible? Right now I have to turn on and combine like 5 or 6 layers whereas I just really need two: 1-All Reflections, 2-Everything else.

No, that's not possible. You have to add diffuse direct + diffuse indirect + reflection direct + reflection indirect yourself.

cheers,
Thomas

[itsallgoode9]

No, that's not possible. You have to add diffuse direct + diffuse indirect + reflection direct + reflection indirect yourself.

cheers,
Thomas

Thanks for the fast response! that's a bummer because that's a lot more in depth than I need. Will have to do it manually with a couple different renders.