Question: Why do Post-process in 3ds Max?

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

At the risk of showing my ignorance, I've been looking through the feature request forum and looked through the 'post-process' request thread. 

I'm scratching my head; why would you do post process in 3ds Max when there are other programs already dedicated to that?  It would seem to go against the simplicity of corona and also add a lot of unnecessary redundancy?  Can someone explain why this is necessary or a good thing?

Thanks,

Marcellus

[Juraj]

Not gonna go into detail now as this has many facets.

At bare minimum, renderers can't just output clean AA and GI like they did 10 years ago and everyone would composite the image afterwards. I kind of expect from photorealistic renderer to go step further and provide result akin to DSLR and cameras.
That includes phenomena like glare, natural tonemapping, etc.

This is the way the whole industry go, they simulate reality. With real-time engines and their WYSIWYG workflow you get to see what you're creating instantly, and you can be far more precise and consistent, let alone faster and efficient.

Of course, how much of true post-process like curves should be in framebuffers depends on individual needs and preference, but why not ? No one is asking for brush or cut tools.

Also, who wants to always output raw linear output, he just can. Options, they can be ignored. Even than having post-process in Framebuffer is helpful, because you can use it to preview your future result, switch it off, and do it cleanly in post later.

[Malor]

Well, from my personal experience, i would say speed. I had design projects with really picky clients, where i had to pump out about 15 renders every morning, for a week or two, with small changes in every iteration. and going through the usual workflow with aeron soon became a very tedious process, taking about 1.5 hours every day to process all the images. having built in tools in frame buffer itself would've been much faster. and generally speaking interiors usually only require lens effects and some curves adjustment. so why not have them built in the engine with an additional degree of physical consistency (corona folks do those things really well)

[zuliban]

i do alot of post work and i still don't like this kind of workflow not because the results but because renders should aim to be ''cameras'' not just something that render the Gl and you do the rest in post.

if you look any digital camera image is not ''good enough'' straight from the camera and photographers go straight into Photoshop to create better colors ect ect. alot of professional photographers want to emulate traditional film lets call this film our tone mapping in CG, some tone mappings like kodak, fuji created back in the day beautiful colors contrast and so on...

our tone mapping in 3d is limited and looks bad straight from the render so we must ''fix'' it, it creates gray colors burned renders and so on you either wait until the developer create a great tone mapping or do this in post .

we could be silent and say nothing and stay with our postproduction workflow happy  or try to help the developers to create a better render engine .

[denisgo22]

Well, from my personal experience, i would say speed. I had design projects with really picky clients, where i had to pump out about 15 renders every morning, for a week or two, with small changes in every iteration. and going through the usual workflow with aeron soon became a very tedious process, taking about 1.5 hours every day to process all the images. having built in tools in frame buffer itself would've been much faster. and generally speaking interiors usually only require lens effects and some curves adjustment. so why not have them built in the engine with an additional degree of physical consistency (corona folks do those things really well)

it is absolutely right!
it is a very real working situation in some studios, when you need to do at the same time, several new projects and on demand
of architects to correct some old projects///
sometimes up to ten exteriors and interiors in one day///therefore, the smaller quantity production work levels, less problems and mistakes//

[Ondra]

...unnecessary redundancy...

I see what you did there :D

[sebastian___]

I'll paste again these pics.
How would you compose the shot without a "realtime" glare if you would want a glare from the sun to flash and show in a particular moment ? It would be trial and error with a a post workflow. And maybe with this scene would be easier, but if you would have let's say a character twisting a knife and in an exact moment the knife would flash a glare. That would be difficult to setup in post.




and with a post processing bloom or glare you can change a scene dramatically. Again difficult to imagine the changes without seeing straight in the framebuffer. Notice how you can flood more than half a screen with certain type of glare, and without that the entire screen would be black and empty.
 You would have some advantages though with a post workflow, better control and more options, so sometimes maybe the renderer post process would be used just as a preview.

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

...unnecessary redundancy...

I see what you did there :D

I wish I were that clever, but, I work for an engineering group.  For structural systems, some redundancies are necessary :) 

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

I get the responses about time and deadlines, and I'm not nearly advanced as most on here,

... but I will slightly push back on Sebastian's suggestions.  For the exact sun reflections, I would say we might be seeing the tree and not the forest.  Why don't you fake it?  Can't you just paint in the glare or the glow? I only do stills so I might be telling you to 'eat cake' but that's not my intent.    My go-bys are traditional art and matte painters.  E.g. why make light rays through a sun-well in a warehouse with volumetric fog (which kills my render time) when I can just do a z-depth mask and paint bucket some light prussian blue, then make some swirly white paint-brush scribbles on the sun-wells and motion blur/distort it.  Its not physically accurate, but its believable and looks good.  And its much more fun to do.

Anyways, I get the responses about deadlines, but I just imagine more frankenstein of post-process if I have to use two programs to do it.  I like corona because its simple, I worry its going to turn into v-ray complexity in a couple years.  I'm one of those less intelligent folk who do not like a lot of buttons :)

/Rant.

[Juraj]

I like corona because its simple, I worry its going to turn into v-ray complexity in a couple years. 

People are asking about adding artistic/creative options, those don't go against the nature of 'simplicity' of renderer. Artistic options can be ignored if they don't suit you, and by not using them, you do no harm to the image process.

There is big difference between "simple" (in terms of usage) and "bare-bone". Corona lacks features, both compared to some competitors, and to potential of rendering technology and some features do not work as should or best they can.

Rendering engines will evolve whether some like it or not. And if it won't, then in single moment people will disloyally go to another competitor, that's how it works :- ). Have a look at Octane -> F-Storm. So many users dropped the engine overnight after years of use simply because the new developer showed better interest at introducing features.

As long as the features are done tidily, and don't obstruct anything the software stays at the same level of complexity to use.

Why don't you fake it?

Why even use renderer at all if you can Photoshop it ? Why even Photoshop it if you can paint it ?

Because people use technology to do it for them, that's what technology is primarily for, advancing and automating processes. If you want to stop at certain point because it already does what you want and you want it to stay at this point, that is just your personal preference but by going to an extent of arguing against further advancement already smells of neo-luddite attitude.

10 years ago people wondered why use GI ? :- )   {actually some on Vray forums still do... }

My go-bys are traditional art and matte painters.  E.g. why make light rays through a sun-well in a warehouse with volumetric fog (which kills my render time) when I can just do a z-depth mask and paint bucket some light prussian blue, then make some swirly white paint-brush scribbles on the sun-wells and motion blur/distort it.  Its not physically accurate, but its believable and looks good.  And its much more fun to do.

Did you start this thread to truly ask about other users's reasons ? Or did you do it to write your own opinions ;- ) Because rants are better suited to personal blogs than hidden behind honest question as click-bait to start confrontation. It's not hard to guess that most users have rational reasons for their workflow and requests.

-

[Marcellus Ludovicus]

I appreciate your edited response.

Yes it was a genuine question.

[spadestick]

As long as the features are done tidily, and don't obstruct anything the software stays at the same level of complexity to use.

Great statement! Worth writing a blog on this line of thought.

[philippelamoureux]

I prefer to have the engine render stuff as physically as possible instead of faking it myself in photoshop. The risk of messing it up is too high in my case haha!

I also kinda like the ''technical'' side of 3d rendering, maybe more than the ''artistry'' side. Both are important though. I think if I was better  at maths and all that I'd like to be a graphics programmer ala John Carmack hehe!

[Benny]

I prefer to have the engine render stuff as physically as possible instead of faking it myself in photoshop. The risk of messing it up is too high in my case haha!

I also kinda like the ''technical'' side of 3d rendering, maybe more than the ''artistry'' side. Both are important though. I think if I was better  at maths and all that I'd like to be a graphics programmer ala John Carmack hehe!

That's funny, I'm kind of the same, I want to minimize my PS to levels and some color balance if I can.

About the technical vs the artistry, that reminds me of when I was a kid and taking pictures with film. When I was in the darkroom I felt it was a nuisance to have to go out and shoot something so I had something to develop and play with, but other times when I was out taking pictures it was just such a pain to have to wait and develop before I could see the result. Nowadays I'm done with the technical side and want it all to focus on the artistic.

[sebastian___]

For the exact sun reflections, I would say we might be seeing the tree and not the forest.  Why don't you fake it? 

Actually I'm almost a fan of using tricks and "shortcuts" as much as possible, perhaps because I'm forced to, rendering sometimes movies with very heavy scenes, so sometimes that fog bank floating over the forest is not a true volumetric smoke, but just a plane with alpha channel facing the camera, and maybe even half the forest in the distance is just a plane, and only the close trees and grass are 3d models. Same with the moss over the tree trunk, some are "real" moss, and the far away ones are just painted.

But sometimes it's easier to use the real thing.
As an example, let's say I have a 3d person walking around a dusty street, each step would generate a small cloud of dust. So I could easily place by hand a cloud of particles at each step contact. Or even easier, move the work to 2d domain and just place 2d layers of dust in after effects.
 But if I have 50 people walking and running, doing it by hand get's a lot more difficult and possibly annoying and repetitive, and suddenly it gets easier to setup an automatic generating system of "true" dust particles at each contact of feet with the ground. And if I spend a little more time and make sure the dust intensity is related with the force the character hits the ground, that means I can move the camera closer or in all kinds of angles, and it will still look realistic and good. Sure I have longer render times and some work time to setup the system, but next time I can reuse the system even for large groups of people, or even for giant spiders, horses and so on...