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Comments
Thanks, Esemwy. I'd never understood what canvases were, but your PDF file made it very clear.
This was a very easy to understand explanation of where to start with using canvases thank you!
Thanks for the tutorial, I got through it pretty well, but now I'm stumped on what to do next. I've got my lights adjusted on my subject, but everything is against this black background. Sorry to sound thick. I'm probably missing something really obvious, but I'm totally new to this and still a bit lost.
EDIT: Looks like there's a checkbox for "Alpha" to render the background transparent. I'll try that.
Alpha isn't necessary. After you have EXR files for each of your canvases, the real magic happens in Photoshop. That's covered in the second half of the tutorial. That's where you'll do the tone mapping and layer blending to composite your final image.
I did everything in the tutorial, and still ended up with a black background. No idea why. Totally confused.
Do you mean the image is black, or just the empty background? You can use channels in PS to make the background transparent, if that's what you're after. Alpha in DAZ has some strange behaviors, so I avoid it when working with canvases.
Ah, maybe that's what I need to do. Sorry, this the first time I've ever tried anything like this. It's a good tutorial, but I'm lost at the end. I'll play some more.
Also- not sure how much lighting is considered enough when doing these. So far everything I've tried has rendered too fast and had horrible pixelization (like you describe in your tutorial.) Does it not take the HDR into account? Maybe I just need to boost the other lights.
Do you mean you are using an HDRI image as a background and its not appearing?
Did you turn Show Dome on?
Did you create a canvas for Environment Lighting?
It WILL only show on the canvas for Environment Lighting and no other.
Lighting to canvases can be tricky when you are doing things like environment domes and emissive surfaces.
Unfortunately with iray canvases ignoring our assigned progressive render settings, and DS deeming it complete within a few seconds achieving inadequate iterations, the overwhelming grainy exr image we are left with isn't particularly useful. I wish they'd fix this issue so that all advanced techniques like this one could be used. This is an excellent demonstration of post layered lighting however, thankyou :) The commercial industry does this as part of their normal workflow incase the art director or client requires adjustment.
It most certainly does not "ignore our assigned progessive render settings". I believe it works exactly as designed, and I use it for nearly every render I do. I can adjust my render settings and get however many iterations I want.
I read someplace in the forum that it may complete early with inadequate convergance if you render something like a depth map without a beauty canvas in the render. I haven't tested that, though.
Well that would certainly be a special use case...rendering ONLY a depth map. Certainly does not qualify for "ignores render settings" general claims, I should think. Like I said... I do it for virtually ever render.
Thanks for the great tutorial! I had no trouble following it and getting the desired results. However, there is one aspect of rendering canvases that confuses me: If you are working with a project that contains both an HDRI light source (in my case a sky map) and a set of lights within the scene, is there a way to have the HDRI on a separate canvas from the lights? When I choose the "environment lighting" setting for the canvas, it creates a file based on the settings under the environment tab in render settings. The problem is that if I select "dome only" in order to get the HDRI alone, then the canvases for the lights become blank. However, if I select "dome and scene", the environment canvas contains the lights from the scene as well as the HDRI. I hope I have explained this adequately. If anyone could offer any insight into this issue I would be tremendously appreciative!
That's not possible.
The Environment Canvas is only going to do the HDRI. Its never going to do the lights, it is specifically limited to Environment... the HDRI or Sun/Sky light. Are you sure you set the canvases up correctly?
Thanks for the quick response evilded777! I went back and double-checked all my settings and indeed I had made an error in setting up the canvases. Now they are working as I had hoped. Cheers!
I disagree. I have thoroughly tested this, both with and without the beauty pass, with and without quality enabled. It does ignore the render settings because it cancels itself after about a minute with minimal samples, regardless of your assigned settings, as observed alone. It is not working as intended, it needs to clear the noise and match the number of iterations the beauty pass has, and it doesnt. I have provided proof of this, as have others. If it matched the iterations and used the assigned progressive render settings the depth or distance or any of the other passes would match the clearness of the beauty pass (meaning it will have the same amount of noise as the beauty pass) and would render much longer than one minute.
And just to demonstrate my point again, here is a render comparison using Depth/Distance compared to its Beauty pass rendered the same time, with Rendering Quality OFF. A 15 minute render, clocking 1310 Iterations. As you can see by the severe lack of clarity when compared to the beauty, it is obvious it is not matching the render settings and failing to complete consistent Iterations. - Its just a case of it needs more work from the developers before canvases can truly be utilized to their full potential, and I cant wait for that day, because I too love working with multiple passes as part of my workflow.
Yea... see what I said above. You are talking about a special use case involving a z pass. That is not what this thread is about. And your comment suggests you are referring to the topic here, "lighting with canvases" and it does not. Sooooo.....we're both right? But you're in the wrong place.
Canvases are canvases dude. Its a problem accross the board, I was saying its a bummer but otherwise a truely awesome function, and that this is one of the render workflows I do enjoy employing myself aswell. Then you tell me I was wrong so ... I explained. Meant nothing by it.
Just how is it a problem "across the board"? You site a specific use case, and then say "its a problem across the board". How?
You need to run this test with DOF off. The pixelation along the edges of each character in the depth canvas for out-of-focus obects appears to be how Iray works. To Iray, the only way it can indicate a falloff is to feather the outline, which gives it a rough appearance. It can't apply different levels to show falloff, as it's the gray level that indicates depth.
Thank you for the constructive feedback
This does appear to be a limitation if its not a bug, but you've just given me an idea of a possible workaround with your comment, provided the beauty is rendered without DOF all the same. Cheers!
I guess the pdf is kapoot, right? It's not available on the dropbox link. I'm too sick today to read these two pages first to see if its even needed...
Follow this link to DeviantArt.
Is the PDF no longer available?
Follow the link to esemwy's DeviantArt page that jag11 posted last, and click the download button to the right of the page. The pdf is in the zip file.
I fixed all the old links that dropbox destroyed. Y'all let me know if anything seems amiss.