Chaos Corona Forum

Chaos Corona for Cinema 4D => [C4D] General Discussion => Topic started by: BigAl3D on 2021-02-08, 22:34:36

Title: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: BigAl3D on 2021-02-08, 22:34:36
I know all about the power of the Tone Mapping feature, as well as the amazing Light Mix settings. If I render an image sequence for an animation for example, and I adjust the tone mapping and light mix settings, how does that apply to the other frames? Would I need to select all of the frames in the animation first?
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: Nejc Kilar on 2021-02-08, 22:57:12
I'm not sure if I understand you correctly but just having it applied in the VFB or the Corona Camera Tag (if you are using it) is pretty much it. Corona will use those settings when it will render out every frame of the animation - unless you've "animated" those values.

For me it really helps to think of animations as basically flip books. Each frame is its own image but played in a sequence... Bam, animation :)

Hope that helps!
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: BigAl3D on 2021-02-09, 01:08:04
Thanks for the reply. I think I'm good with understanding what animation is. What I mean is let's say I render a 300 frame animation. I then start playing with the Light Mix. Maybe I have a different time of day. How does Corona apply the different settings to those 300 frames? See what I mean?
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: romullus on 2021-02-09, 10:08:06
It will apply lightmix changes only to the last frame rendered. If you want edit all animation, you need to save it as a sequence of CEXR files and batch process them in Corona image editor.
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: ficdogg on 2021-02-09, 13:06:52
It will apply lightmix changes only to the last frame rendered. If you want edit all animation, you need to save it as a sequence of CEXR files and batch process them in Corona image editor.
Correct me if Im wrong, but saving CXR for animations is impossible in Cinema 4D, since the only way to save a CXR in c4d right now is through the VFB.
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: romullus on 2021-02-09, 15:05:04
Sorry, i have no clue if it's possible to do in Corona for C4D.
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: TomG on 2021-02-09, 15:39:36
It's not possible to animate LightMix in C4D or Max. Animating in the CIE would take some very involved scripting, to be honest.

The way people animate LightMix is to set up the LightSelects, leave it at a good default, render, and then recombine the LightSelect layers in a video editor. They can then use Exposure, Color Tint, enabling/disabling layers, etc. in the video editor, animating those there.

(Should add that this requires 32 bit output, and the Linear Add would be the process for stacking the layers)
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: TomG on 2021-02-09, 15:41:41
(This is the same for Tone Mapping, you can't animate that either, in either version of Corona - again the process is to export 32 bit formats and animate in a video editor. So, you would leave Tone Mapping at default in that case, and do all your tone mapping in post).
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: BigAl3D on 2021-02-09, 15:57:44
Just to clarify, I'm NOT asking if I can animate the light mix or tone mapping. If I wanted to change the lighting using light mix, again AFTER all 300 frames were rendered, can that be done? I know nothing about the standalone editor. There is a lot of great info on using light mix in an archvis image to change the time of day, but that is a still image.
Title: Re: Apply Tone Mapping to Animation
Post by: TomG on 2021-02-09, 17:10:05
Ah gotcha! I thought you wanted it to animate :) In which case, so long as you save CXRs, the CIE can be used to tweak it in post via scripting (to apply a particular set of tone mapping to a range of frames for instance). There's some info on https://coronarenderer.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/12000030886-what-is-the-corona-image-editor-#batch

Since tone mapping can be applied to EXRs, no reason that I can think of that it wouldn't work there (lightmix and denoising would not be scriptable in that case though).

And there is still the general option with 32 bit images, where you can use a video editor to apply LUTs, adjust Exposure etc. (you would need a video editor to composite the frames into an animation anyway) - only difference is it wouldn't be using the nice Corona UI, but functionality would be the same.

EDIT - note, the CIE is just "the VFB but without a surrounding 3D application or rendering functionality", so it's easy enough to learn. Scripting just basically runs the CIE to process each image in a chosen set of images, so conceptually not anything magical or complex either, you can just think of it as calling the "VFB" to process a bunch of images. Writing the script, depends on how comfortable you are with scripting in general, but the examples on the link above should get you up and running, it's pretty straightforward as far as scripting goes, about as simple as it gets :)