Post effects in VFB on animation

[peter menich]

This is probs a really dumb question...

I'm doing an animation using C4D Corona and I want to take advantage of the Post tweaks in the VFB, how do I do that?

Every time I look at a tutorial it's always about a still.

Can you use those post - render tools on an animation sequence?

I'm so confused!!

P

[Nejc Kilar]

Yep, the same settings will work when rendering out an animation too :)

You can even animate the tonemapping values by using a Corona Camera Tag if need be but even if you aren't using a Corona Camera Tag you'll still get images outputted with the VFB settings. Animations are basically still images in succession so... It works just like it would on a still :)

[mmarcotic]

Hi,

as Nejc already mentioned, you can absolutely do changes to Post for animation, primarily through the Render settings (Camera and Post-Processing) or the Corona Camera tag. As Corona VFB doesn't have a keyframing option inside itself, it is, however, impossible to do post tweaks in each individual frame after it is rendered (only in the last one, or during the render, if you catch the frame)

Thanks,
Jan

[peter menich]

cool. good to know.

So, for example; yesterday I did a 14 hour render of an interior scene that has the post vignette added and is a bit dark, rendered as a PNG sequence.

Can I now bring that render back into corona/c4d and remove the vignette and tweak the exposure without having to do the full 14 hours again?

Or do I need to render in another format like OpenEXR?

P

[Nejc Kilar]

Ah yes, I think you are running into the "should I do it in post" or "should I just bake it in as its rendered" debate. I personally prefer to bake it in but there isn't a right or wrong answer. Depends on the situation.

That said, undoubtedly if you'd render linear and you'd save it into a 32bit OpenEXR file... You could do pretty much anything with it. You could, if you've set up your LightSelect outputs, create your own LightMixing setup in post. Downside? All the nice features you have in the VFB you'll have to recreate in post.

The downside of baking the tonemapping and all that in however is that you'll be very limited in post as to what you can do and what you can't. You can't tweak the exposure, you can't properly adjust the full range of the highlights etc. You just have to roll with what you've outputted and maybe only make some smaller "artistic" changes.

So TLDR, I don't think you can do much at this point but re-render if you ain't happy with the vignette. Vignettes are somewhat easy to "fake" in post anyway so maybe you can re-render with all the tonemapping bonanza on but just do the vignette in post.

Small tip, even when you bake things in consider rendering in 16bit PNGs. You still won't be able to get the vignette reversed or anything like that but it will give you a little bit of extra leeway if you'd like to adjust some minor things.