How to get render preview exactly when saved with HDRI

Wed Mar 10, 2021 10:42 pm

I have a scene that is very HDR sensitive. It looks perfect in IPR.
I am trying to get this render output, with HDR enabled.

All LW CS are set to linear. Image saving is set to linear.

The straight up preview looks like this:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/8dRNxQQ1S1cFFqW97

When I enable "get full linear HDRI", I get this:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/ARY16TupYfBuhYba7

Seems when HDRI is on, saved from the image viewer from F9, tone mapping seems to go out the window. That is salvageable. I'd like to fix this, but do not know how, but it's something I can fix in post.

But when I save this in a F10 render as EXR, I get this (after setting gamma to 0.5 in PS, because otherwise it's just blown out across the board):

https://photos.app.goo.gl/owqzczvHnAHjeCyi7

No way I can ever make this look like the original again. What am I doing wrong?

Thu Mar 11, 2021 10:11 pm

have you tried to disable this "get full linear HDRI" option? The output EXR files will be HDRI (float) in any case, but this option probably is also disabling all the color controls and tone mapping from the imager node, so it is easy that the exported files don't match the IPR rendering.

Thanks,
-Juanjo