Messages

511

Gallery / Re: CGI Livingroom

« on: 2020-06-28, 19:42:16 »

nice one! I put my chips on displacement for the rug :D

512

General CG Discussion / Re: Unreal Engine 5 Tech Demo

« on: 2020-05-14, 07:21:38 »

I seen this yesterday and fell off my chair. Its absolutely amazing the technology in this, I cant wait to see what people do with it.

513

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-08, 22:10:58 »

I guess I'm being trolled - aren't you the one that allegedly removed Fstorm watermarks from some earlier tests?

lol!! I think you are being trolled :D Made me giggle though

514

Gallery / Re: Spring 2020/Quarantine Street

« on: 2020-05-07, 20:08:23 »

Fantastic work, love how you bring the life into these! Thanks for sharing the breakdown too.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-07, 17:50:35 »

I think the trick really of making a render more of what the human eye can see is in the tonemapping/color management.  Cameras blow out highlights and darken shadowed areas, combating those two things I think will get you a lot closer...

This is basically what I mean by the way the human eye perceives things, thats a good way to put it.

No, it's not "photoreal". There is no real-world photographic camera that can produce those results...

Are you referring to the render engine or the process of capturing light, color and contrast with a camera?

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-07, 12:56:24 »

lol thats fair enough, thanks for chiming in its been an interesting experiment.

... I always come to the same conclusion, a renderer is a tool, and if used wisely, you can produce beautiful results with any of them.

I completely agree with you.

For the experiments I posted above, I was interested in keeping focus on just one variable - exposure, and disregarding tone mapping entirely for the sake of trying to single out of this variable has any effect on the flexibility of the lighting control from the artists perspective after rendering. From this point onwards introducing one additional variable - highlight compression, and what I expect to be able to control once I have my rendered image with tone mapping.

I once proposed devs what I consider could work as workaround. To allow Corona to save directly into .dng format. Adobe's DNG has both 16bit and 32bit floating point options. And I thought perhaps this would confuse raw editors less, effectively "trick" them.

I think Juraj is on to something here. For people in the archviz field this would be a great option.

For those who work in film, they already work in 32bit space with linear images and thus have a solid pipeline for post production corrections.

Speaking on behalf of myself (and assuming others in this thread), we want that same control in our VFB, we want to render like photographers. Which is why I think fstorm is toted as having excellent tone mapping controls.

edit:
Instead of rendering like a photographer, what I mean to say is render as the human eye perceives things.

517

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-07, 12:25:38 »

deleted, reinstalled Fstorm,  and damn! I don't like it! I forgot how it feels, well, completely different. In a bad way. It seems the glossiness is indeed still mapped from 0.4 to 1.0.

Takes a few moments to work some things out. I really like how simple it is, just be aware all bitmaps come in at the correct gamma no need to change anything except HDRI's should be set to 2.2 (kind of opposite but first time user friendly in a way, same goes for render settings in tone mapping leave the gamma settings alone). One thing that I find difficult is there is no camera settings like shutter speed, fstop doesnt affect the lighting like a camera does (that I have found yet, I dont really use it either to be honest just tests every now and then). This will also affect these tests since we cant really bench it against each other. Exposure seems to be a bit arbitrary (or I havent found the recipe for it). But I think this is the charm of it, you dont need to be a technician to use it, you just adjust the exposure/tone mapping and the rest is taken care of without much thought - which is kind of where I see this conversation going, people want an out of the box photo real experience, not having to think about gamma settings or camera settings and get the photo real result. Technical people will probably have a melt down at first but theres probably more to it that Im unaware of, just going by what I read of peoples blog posts etc.

518

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-07, 09:32:32 »

Found out that max ray intensity was the culprit in Vray. Disabling it solved the issue.

Yep, that did the trick!

519

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-07, 08:05:12 »

Yes it took me a few moments to work out how to get parity between them at 1600 / 0 Exposure, thats because there was some limitations with the Physical Camera. My mistake, I used Vray Camera for Vray, Physical Camera for Corona (as I had issues with the Corona Camera overriding my global settings).

This should get you off on the right foot for the comparison.

Vray Settings (Vray Camera):



Corona Settings (Physical Camera):



3D Files (3dsmax 2019):

https://we.tl/t-K37vLOCyk0

For this setup I had to change the fstop (16) shutter speed (2000) for a good base point for adjusting the exposure 3 stops. This way you should have both on parity from this point onwards. Based on the excel document in Corona thats -2.813 for +3 exposure, and -5.813 for 0 exposure. Vray you just adjust the exposure without any need for a conversion.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-07, 07:24:38 »

Is it even possible to match every technical aspect between render engines anyway?

@lupaz I dont think so, nor is it entirely important - what I find important is parity between materials. You should be able to change lighting based on preference and if the materials are setup correctly (PBR for example) then you know you can adjust the lighting/tonemapping to taste without borking something else along the line.

Well, always though Vray and corona photographic exposure settings would match but after quickly looking at it a bit closer, it does not seems to be the case. I'll try to dig a bit further if I find time.

@Fluss I think your first thought was correct, so you are not going crazy :) I found that with some testing this morning 1600 - 12800 is exactly 3 stops. Thanks to @cjwidd and @maru for posting the thread on the vs EV thread I was able to use the excel sheet to do the conversion and it seems correct to me.

Vray 1600 ISO / 0 Exposure



Vray 1600 ISO / +3 Exposure



Vray 12800 ISO / 0 Exposure



Corona 1600 ISO / 0 Exposure



Corona 1600 ISO / +3 Exposure



Corona 12800 ISO / 0 Exposure



Just an FYI if you are trying to follow along in Corona, I had to switch this to a Physical Camera as the Corona Camera was giving me strange results. Not entirely sure why - maybe its just because I always use Physical Camera for vray/corona and used to the setup.

edit:
My conclusion is that I still think the ACES workflow is producing the result that is most similar to photographic workflow (lightroom). Where if you have a well exposed image with no crushed areas then you should be able to push the light either way without compromising your highlights somewhere (actually more so since we are working in 32bit float). Similar to how you can blow out the fstorm render and then pull it back with the burn setting, this is impossible with Corona's highlight compression.

521

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-06, 15:48:52 »

hmm, neither do to be honest.

I just took a photo of a room in the house as a raw photo and took it into lightroom:

Exposure: 0


Exposure: 1.5


Exposure: 3.0


The problem Im seeing is the light behaviour is actually quite similar to the fstorm render tests a couple pages back (potentially the default bloom was effecting the result). Where as I see the highlight areas in these last renders as dull in comparison.

I think your last Corona render is probably the best of all 3. I find this quite interesting, ill have to think about this a bit more for awhile.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-06, 13:13:37 »

This is probably a terrible example as I dont do indoor photography (and the snow doesnt help) but this is almost the same expectation of results that I got with the aces test. Exposure stops, -5, -2, 0, +3, +5

523

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-06, 12:44:36 »

hmm ok I understand what you mean, but this requires re-rendering. As with the ACES workflow you can adjust the exposure and get the range you need without blowing out areas, similar to how you would work with a photograph in lightroom.

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[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-06, 08:33:04 »

@Fluss, I gave you settings a go and I found at EV0 you are correct, they look similar. Things start to go pear shaped when you hit -5 +3 (for the sRGB/Highlight Compression). Whats your take on this, I miss something?

Vray HDRI Aces





Vray HDRI sRGB + Curve/Highlight Compression

525

[Max] General Discussion / Re: Tonemapping - Plz Halp

« on: 2020-05-05, 18:49:25 »

Thx for the test James, I'm dubitative with this conclusion tho. A wider colorspace only allows for a slightly better GI (corona already benefit from that). The lighting part you mention in Vray is the consequence of the tone mapping curve embedded in the ACES view transform.

Lupaz is right, the scene needs to use the same lighting (free hdri or constant color) and the same assets (I see the widows suddenly disappeared in the Fstorm scene). For those who are wondering, the textures are from the corona library. Also, matching the initial exposure is important to start on a similar basis imho.

Good to know, ill have to have a play with these settings tomorrow. Cheers!