rendering from VFB to C4D or PSD

[steppes]

Hi all!

I am a CG artist since more than 15 Years. Since more than 10 Years I am a V-Ray Guy but now we are living in "corona-times" (mention the equivovation!). I am trying to get into corona and it is pleasing me and a pretty nice Engine. But one thing makes me suffer: How can I get my Multi-Pass-Passes to a nice PSD-File for postprocesing?

1.
In the VFB there is this nice ">to C4D" Button that sends me the current state of my tweaked Image (Tonemapping, Lightmix, etc.) to the C4D Picture-Mangager. But I miss a ">to PSD"-Button that sands the Passes to one nice Photoshop-file! As a workaround I twaek my image an send several states of the image to the C4D Picture-viewer and save my PSD from there.

2.
Why is there no ">to C4D", a ">to PSD" or even the option to save PSDs in the Corona-Image-Editor? Yesterday I rendered a file and saved it as a .cxr in hope of having all the features of the VFB in the Corona-Image-Editor to tweak several versions of my image and then export them to PSDs. Today I could not find a way to do that. The only thing is to export all the layers as single images an merge them in Photoshop, but this is annoying and time consuming.

3.
Will there be a batch-render-feature for saving several .cxr-Files automatically (that requires the option to get nice PSDs after tweaking the cxr.)?

4.
Why are images in VFB looking different to the same image sent to c4d when using Curves in the Tonemapping-Section?

What I am dreaming of, is the option to batch-render several images (different takes or files) over night or weekend, saved as editable .cxrs. After tweaking these .cxrs I can export my image-variations of each .cxr as PSD-files to work on the images in Photoshop afterwards.

Or am i missing something?

Thanks for your answers and help!

kind regards
steppes

[djstevanovic]

+1 on this, im now making alarms and wake up at night to put another render :)

[Designerman77]

I was asking myself exactly the same thing... when I did a multipass render yesterday, just to find out that in the C4D pic viewer the "beauty"-picture does not show the effects of the multipass settings.
Where is the sense then?

[Nejc Kilar]

...
4.
Why are images in VFB looking different to the same image sent to c4d when using Curves in the Tonemapping-Section?
...

It is a bug / the way Corona is implemented in Cinema 4D. Long story short, you can't render multiple renders with Corona for Cinema 4D since basically v1 because everything gets outputted through the PV which causes some weirdness and changes the gamma.

It is a super duper critical issue because right now you can't render tonemapped images and animations with any sort of automation without them looking different than what you see in the VFB. Which in turn, I'm sad to say, makes everything unusable for bigger mission critical projects.

From experience though, if you have a well lit scene the gamma difference will be harder to notice. Unless you are working on something more detailed and "color important" you can get away with it. As soon as you step in the world of more dramatically lit scenes (or darker scenes in general) you effectively can't render that out because the difference will be HUGE.

If you are doing color critical work then at least you can hope to CC the tonemapped image in post but sometimes the gamma difference just makes things look drastically different.

I'm afraid to say that I don't think there is a solution for this critical issue - it is up to the devs. It's been reported a couple of times, if thats of any help :)

[TomG]

It would also be possible to use the PV for IR, so that when adjusting the scene, you are adjusting it for how it looks in PV, and then you will know for sure what you will get when using any sort of batch rendering, animations, etc. that will save from the PV.

Making both PV and VFB look the same is non-trivial, related to translating wideRGB rendering space into visible screen RGB, where the more complete solutions would in fact have to be in the core and would need work there (so, affecting 3ds Max too). So while we have it on file as needing looking into, there's no timeframe for when that might be possible at the moment.

[Nejc Kilar]

It would also be possible to use the PV for IR, so that when adjusting the scene, you are adjusting it for how it looks in PV, and then you will know for sure what you will get when using any sort of batch rendering, animations, etc. that will save from the PV.
...

Out of curiosity, what would be the procedure to get the IR running in the PV?

[TomG]

Been a while since I looked, but as far as I know if IR is running in the VFB, the PV should update along with it.

[Nejc Kilar]

Can't reproduce that - the PV just goes black with the IR being ON even if its set to be the default output in the preferences.

edit: added the video attachment.

[TomG]

Ah that's a shame - it only copies over once you stop IR? Or only copies during final rendering?

- When you stop IR, squeaked in testing it amongst doing other stuff :)

[Nejc Kilar]

Ah that's a shame - it only copies over once you stop IR? Or only copies during final rendering?

It only copies it once you stop the IR. It does display the statistics (the number of passes & status of the rendering process) correctly in the PV but there is no image until you stop the IR.

So effectively, it seems like I was right before when I said that there is no way to render tonemapped images / animations out of Corona for Cinema 4D right now and expect them to look the same as in the VFB - Unless you want to work without the IR which I think we can all agree is not a plausible scenario for a modern renderer.

And the issue only gets worst on high contrast scenes.

I feel weird for saying this but if this isn't a top priority then I'm just confused :D

[TomG]

Not a question of priority, as a question of complexity - this is where it would impact how things work in Max too, so a proper solution is going to be hard to figure out what it should be, and how to implement it without breaking every existing scene :)

[Nejc Kilar]

Not a question of priority, as a question of complexity - this is where it would impact how things work in Max too, so a proper solution is going to be hard to figure out what it should be, and how to implement it without breaking every existing scene :)

Well hopefully that is why the Corona roadmaps are labeled as "tentative" roadmaps and focus can go on the more critical fixes if need be. I realize it is not ideal but at the same time we are not talking about an issue that impedes a workflow - its an issue that makes the software quite a lot more unusable in certain fairly common lighting scenarios.

I mean even in this topic we have a user that needs to stay up at night so that he can render multiple renders. I'd call that basic, critical functionality if you will.

Maybe as an alternative to fixing it ASAP there could be a proper sized note next to the downloads and the main page. Something of a warning that the VFB isn't reliable at this point if you plan to render animations / multiple renders over night. At least that way users wouldn't be surprised by it when doing commercial projects - especially projects where they are liable to deliver and then run into this issue.

I mean again, I think we are talking about an issue that is considered "standard workflow" issue. Even the marketing material seems to point that the way one is expected to use Corona is through the VFB - which one will do and then he'll get in trouble once he'll render the final renders. Hopefully that won't happen 1 day before the deadline because then they are screwed.

[TomG]

Yes, we are aware of the limitation it brings :) But again, it's not us not understanding how it impacts workflow, it's that the fix is not trivial and has wide reaching implications for every scene ever created - which means we have to proceed with caution.

[Nejc Kilar]

Yes, we are aware of the limitation it brings ...

Could we perhaps get a warning up then?

Some of the bug reports pertaining this have reported in the beta versions. Just quickly going through the bug reports I can find at least a couple of reports from last year and 2018. We even have topic open since 2015 (https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php?topic=10472.msg121698#msg121698) and it was resurrected in 2018.

If it wasn't resolved in 5 years I suppose at least people should be warned?

[vudumotion]

Hey!

this should be a top priority, it's a very basic functionality that everyone needs. I understand how fixing this will effect ...well everything, but it needs to be done. Delaying this is pointless.

D.