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Render passes coming out white or black
Posted: Fri Jul 21, 2017 11:07 am
by OutOfTime007
Hello,
I have set up a model with some render passes and they keep coming out white or black. The preview mode looks correct, but the final renders are just black or white.
Here is how I have set it up. What am I doing wrong?
Render Passes setup with Z-depth in preview:
Final render with depth selected:

Re: Render passes coming out white or black
Posted: Tue Jul 25, 2017 5:54 am
by DigiChuckle
In my experience Z depth particularly can behave like this because their value ranges are typically very high (in the thousands sometimes). I can't give you the exact technical explanation, but it has to do with wold scale and the size of your objects and scene.
All info is probably in there, you just can't see it (in 32 bit, white is more than white, and black is more than black). You could bring the Z pass in, say, Blackmagic Fusion, and perform a Depth Blur on your beauty render, adjust the Z scale (you'll probably have to lower it very very much).
Re: Render passes coming out white or black
Posted: Wed Jul 26, 2017 2:07 pm
by OutOfTime007
I think I understand what you mean, but I think it might be something else. I am not using any weird scaling in my model. The whole scene is no more than a few Blender units in size.
It is not just the Z pass that comes out like this, it is also when I try using diffuse and other passes that they come out black or white. The weird thing is that they all look like what I would expect in the preview render, but in the final render they are all messed up. So I would think that is should work directily in Octane.
I have never tried using Blackmagic Fusion. It looks pretty cool, downloading the free version now.
Re: Render passes coming out white or black
Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2018 5:52 pm
by stijnwindig
Has anybody figured this out? I've recently started using the Blender plugin and all my render passes are black or white as well. No info in ém whatsoever, not even when exported to .exr.
Obviously, I'm doing something wrong, because no render passes would make the whole endeavour pretty useless, right?
Thanks in advance for any help on this!
Re: Render passes coming out white or black
Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2018 12:18 am
by J.C
There are three solutions:
1. Use "Z-depth max" in passes settings or adjust rendered file exposure in post-production to get the correct looking z-pass.
2. Use "normalize" node in compositor on that z-pass.
3. Use Info-channel kernel to render z-pass with correct Z-depth max value in kernel settings.