Lens effects not rendering the same in 3.5??

[LudvikKoutny]

While after Vlado's post it's a bit more difficult to take sides, I have to say I remember trying to always use linear sRGB only when creating my images, as some time ago, I spent about two years under the impression that linear is the photorealistic way, and that I should not touch any color mapping, such as reinhard, and that the burnouts are natural.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be rather bleak period of my life, as my images mostly just did not look as good, unless it was specifically uniformly lit exterior scenario. Yes, cameras definitely do capture burnouts. They do not seem to capture images so flat like full on filmic or reinhard produces, but at the same time, I don't think they capture something close to linear sRGB either, because I was just never able to render out average interior scene during sunny day without ever touching highlight compression. It was just impossible to output anything that looked even just remotely good, without resorting to at least little bit of highlight compression.

Ever since I started to use color mapping again, albeit more wisely, my output quality has jumped back up again.

I think, in this case, one simple solution, that would satisfy many user requests, and both sides, would be an option to bake color mapping (including LUT) into output. Just one toggle, which would be disabled by default, which would be something like "I know I am stupid, and I am aware of the consequences, now please ruin my images by baking color corrections into them". Turning it on would just ensure whatever you see in the VFB would be 1:1 saved into the output image, regardless of if it's 8bit or HDR format.

[viscorbel]

Client ask for one change in color tone on all the set. Do you rerender them all, happy you spent those money?
Flexibility, that's why.

No I do not - I point the client back to a previously confirmed proof on which they signed off on. The one where I did the initial adjustments for the whole scene.

You keep misunderstanding me. I merely say waste not, want not.
As such, it shouldn't be on V-Ray to provide by default for the most limiting of workflows, but rather the contrary.
There's always time to save your LDR image off the HDR one in the VFB, and all the options you want.
You want to do all your shoots with Jpegs off a camera capable of raw, go right ahead.

That V-Ray should artificially skew renders by default because of the belief that burnouts aren't physically correct, a belief for which no proof has been given (rather, there's plenty for the contrary), seems to me a non-starter.

And you keep misunderstanding me - At no point I say that this should be the default and only way. I just ask for an option or for possibility to do it as post effect in vfb (with the full 32 bit linear stuff in the background 'wasted')
As for that Vlados's burnout photo - send that to any client and I guarantee a response like "get rid of the nuclear explosion on the wall"

At any rate I think your position of not wasting time on the ldr postwork or output seems clear.

You should. Find me a story of a photographer of renown which outlines their mad shooting skills right into a non-posted Jpeg, and i'll find you a hundred of stories for such renowned ones doing it the way technology worked so hard to enabled them.
Your statement was as generic and blanket as the one you got in response, you see, and because i am quite convinced of my points through factual data, i'd rather you did the next move first.

Notice you said ALL pro photographers. Suddenly the argument is shifting that not all but most shoot raw only. To disprove your argument that ALL pros shoot raw only, I need to post just one guy who shoots jpegs.
Here you go - http://fr.franckboutonnet.com/weddings/
This guy specifically mentioned in an interview that he shoots all manual and jpeg only as a discipline to get the shot right right from the press of the shutter.
There - your statement proven as false. Your hundreds of links will be relevant only to your new argument.

Sure, most have the "shoot raw" as a sacred mantra, but I could argue that for a lot of them it is waste of time, hdd space and processing work. This is a point we will disagree on, because for me the resulting picture is more important than the process, for you I think it is the opposite (correct me if I'm wrong).

Fair enough.
Reread my posts, and you'll find the language never, once, inclusive: i never, once, claim there is only one way.
I claim there are infinitely better ways than doing things right in the VFB, and explain at least some of the basic facts, and reasons behind such workflows.
I also warn, for the millionth time, that the color mapping should be left untouched, ten years after LWF was well laid out and understood, because the approach is non-physical, and wastes said exact, hdr, data in irrecoverable ways.
Nowhere i speak of personal preference, nowhere i judge anyone's workflow (even in your case, where you offer a specific case to counter a general workflow approach, i ask.), nowhere i claim what i say is unshakable truth (in fact, google away, and please show me where i got stuff wrong, for surely i did!).

If that offended you, i can do little to change it, as it's in the past, but would surely love to hear exactly what it is which you found offensive, so to be able to formulate at least an excuse for it.

It's not the language itself, it is the implied tone (which might exist only in my head). Maybe it is just miscommunication over the internet, or perhaps we just that we misunderstand what the other is saying all the time.
Sorry for any offense or hurt feelings, it's not my intention.

Honestly, it would be really useful if you or someone else at Chaosgroup would put together some definite guides about the right ways of doing things. I mean full on comperhensive info on the best practices, tools, example workflows. Right now all this stuff is scattered around the forums in little pieces and most of it is dated/changed/irrelevant etc.
I think average user feels like a blind chicken picking for breadcrumbs all the time.
No wonder we are sticking to what works for us instead of embracing a better way (which implemented only part way is usually making things only worse)

[viscorbel]

I thought of a silly analogy to illustrate my point.

Imagine you are running a hotel with breakfast included. However, you are only serving toast and a grapefruit, because that is proper healthy breakfast (linear output only). Many visitors however crave for bacon (crappy tonemapping) they know it is bad for them and they should eat proper grapefruits only, but nonetheless the craving is there, especially since the hotel owners are spraying a scent of bacon in the air (why even have the levels/curves/burn etc adjustments in the vfb if they should only be done in a compositing app in full 32bits).
When these visitors ask for the bacon, the hotel owners say that bacon is bad for them at breakfast and if they really want it, they should go to a fancy french restaurant around the block after they have finished their breakfast (spend time and money to get/learn nuke/fusion etc).
Of course some visitors are happy with the way things are and always get their bacon afterwards in a fancy restaurant as is proper (vfx houses with proper compositing workflow), but I have no way to estimate how big of a percentage that is. All I know is that in my industry (arch viz and product viz) most people wold take the bad-for-you bacon any day.

"Crappy Filmic" is not a silly new fad/trend/fashion. Call it what you want (I feel there is a strong dislike for the word itself) but I can't imagine people being unhappy with BETTER tonemapping options than the current ones. LUT's etc are crap because they offer no interactivity and no adjustability right there in your rendered scene. "Oh yeah it looks great, I just need to pull highlights a bit.... nope, can't do, need to make and load a different one."
The washed out Reinhard mush has never been a good look. People have just been putting up with it and adding crazy curves to make it look decent.
However it is currently the only way for us sinners who actually use ldr workflows.
HSV Exponential, Intensity exponential and the rest are not even worth a mention, as they all look completely unlike actual photographs.

I don't want the bacon to be forced on everyone, you can hide it in a rubbish bin for all i care, just as long as I can dig it out and put it on my plate (enable in settings or whatever)

[peteristrate]

Viscorbel's above post synthesises my concerns as well.

Yes, if we are to think what is TRULY photoreal, then a high dynamic image (with burnouts) it is the true photoreal image.
So the observation about burnouts being photorealistic is true, although any photographer or videographer is trying to avoid that by all means. I'm waiting for the days when I'll see burnouts in films or professional photos...
If we are to look at the photo cameras 100 years ago, we could say that the results achieved with those photo cameras are also photorealistic, although they look crap compared with photos done with today's cameras.

Burnouts are not something any CGI artist, photographer or videogrpaher wants or needs in his images. That's why the tonemapping was invented in the first place, right ?
I don't think it's a good idea to scrap the tonemapping altogether just because high dynamic images are "the real / the photoreal" images.
So, it's legitimate to say that we need tone mapping to achieve the images we want, specifically, we can call them photo-real images. Or, let's say, tonemapped photoreal images if that sounds better to you from a technical point of view.

Now, what Filmic tonemap is, is just that it is a different tonemap with more advanced controls that allows the user more freedom and control when adjusting his high dynamic renders, as opposed to highlight-compression(Reinhard) which is just a basic tonemap that can only deal with crushing some burnouts.
Whether the result is photoreal or not, it's irrelevant and it's up to the artist.

[^Lele^]

No I do not - I point the client back to a previously confirmed proof on which they signed off on. The one where I did the initial adjustments for the whole scene.

I'm glad i ain't your client.

And you keep misunderstanding me - At no point I say that this should be the default and only way. I just ask for an option or for possibility to do it as post effect in vfb (with the full 32 bit linear stuff in the background 'wasted')
As for that Vlados's burnout photo - send that to any client and I guarantee a response like "get rid of the nuclear explosion on the wall"

At any rate I think your position of not wasting time on the ldr postwork or output seems clear.

You will never obtain the results from the VFB that you could obtain by (wrongly) tweaking CM.
It's a basic operation order (and physical accuracy besides) issue.
Nothing to be done about it.
LUTs? Tonemapping? If you know what you're doing, it's mostly all there.
If we decided to not promote certain aspects of the VFB capabilities was precisely to avoid misuse.
That was clearly a failure.

Notice you said ALL pro photographers. Suddenly the argument is shifting that not all but most shoot raw only. To disprove your argument that ALL pros shoot raw only, I need to post just one guy who shoots jpegs.
Here you go - http://fr.franckboutonnet.com/weddings/
This guy specifically mentioned in an interview that he shoots all manual and jpeg only as a discipline to get the shot right right from the press of the shutter.
There - your statement proven as false. Your hundreds of links will be relevant only to your new argument.

I said ALL WORTH OF NOTICE (English: all of those pertaining to a specific category: that of the noteworthy.).
You can find me as many shoddy photographers wedding pictures in fantastic locations as you please, and the argument is still not proven (as particularly you point me to no such interview, and google returns zero on this guy. I think the little town i live in has 2 such photographers too, and only one bread maker!.).
I'm anyway tired of the rush to the lowest possible point of any given issue: it's terrible debate etiquette, logically invalid, and non-actionable, so i'll have no part in it.

Sure, most have the "shoot raw" as a sacred mantra, but I could argue that for a lot of them it is waste of time, hdd space and processing work. This is a point we will disagree on, because for me the resulting picture is more important than the process, for you I think it is the opposite (correct me if I'm wrong).

You are: there is no example of repeatable art done without a methodology (even Chaos has rules, go figure.).
Method serves the purpose, frees the mind of the burden of technology (once it has fully embraced the needed one, and prepared properly around a pipeline, whatever that may consist of.), and enables the artist to wholly concentrate on the creative task.
If not, Michelangelo would have thrown rocks at a marble block to try and get the David, but he clearly did not: he rather built on each of his forays, from the Pieta' to the Bacchus, from the David to the Moses, the technology he used as fabled as the results he obtained.
As for any credit i should have on what works and what doesn't, that's for the beholder to decide.

It's not the language itself, it is the implied tone (which might exist only in my head). Maybe it is just miscommunication over the internet, or perhaps we just that we misunderstand what the other is saying all the time.
Sorry for any offense or hurt feelings, it's not my intention.

No you are right, i am miffed at the feeling of having spent the last decade PRECISELY in this place: between the obvious, objective, and and data-driven, and the arbitrary, haphazard, and unproven.
Between being miffed, and being offensive, there's a huge stretch, and i do not feel i ever crossed the specific threshold.
But no, you do not have the power to change the course of my day in either direction: it's debating on ideas, i like to think, so no blows need being held back, as long as they stay directed to ideas and concepts. And if i get smacked in the face once or twice, by accident or else, ah well, i spilt no blood anyway, and i may learn something from it.

Honestly, it would be really useful if you or someone else at Chaosgroup would put together some definite guides about the right ways of doing things. I mean full on comprehensive info on the best practices, tools, example workflows. Right now all this stuff is scattered around the forums in little pieces and most of it is dated/changed/irrelevant etc.
I think average user feels like a blind chicken picking for breadcrumbs all the time.
No wonder we are sticking to what works for us instead of embracing a better way (which implemented only part way is usually making things only worse)

On this we agree.
Time is however limited, and this argument had been settled a decade ago, the sticky threads on this very forums proof of that.
It leaves me wondering if a video would change anything at all for the better, where ten years of stickies, and constant repetition, couldn't.

p.s.: Vlado's picture illustrated a concept, like a finger pointing at the moon, and very clearly so. Debating the finger is truly, truly unwise in public.

[peteristrate]

Honestly, it would be really useful if you or someone else at Chaosgroup would put together some definite guides about the right ways of doing things. I mean full on comprehensive info on the best practices, tools, example workflows. Right now all this stuff is scattered around the forums in little pieces and most of it is dated/changed/irrelevant etc.

In fact, ChaosGroup started a series of new videos and tutorials about each and every new feature, as well as a series of webinars. Which I like a lot.
It is worth subscribing to their youtube channel and newsletter.
We're very happy how things are going at the moment.

I'm just looking forward to see a few other bits implemented, like this freaking filmic tonemapping.
But I guess, they'll never finish implementing an infinity of new requests coming from thousands of users, lol. Tough job.

[viscorbel]

blankblank

[viscorbel]

I'm glad i ain't your client.

Are you suggesting it is wrong to have a process in place, with confirmed stages inbetween? Or would you rather have free-for-all change whatever whenever? Say if the client changes not some colors, but rotate the camera a few degrees, or move some objects here and there a few meters. Would you say, sure we love doing chnages after you've confirmed the layout and we've rendered the final image?
I'm glad you are not my client indeed.

You will never obtain the results from the VFB that you could obtain by (wrongly) tweaking CM.
It's a basic operation order (and physical accuracy besides) issue.
Nothing to be done about it.
LUTs? Tonemapping? If you know what you're doing, it's mostly all there.
If we decided to not promote certain aspects of the VFB capabilities was precisely to avoid misuse.
That was clearly a failure.

Right now, in the vfb there is a slider called BURN - to my eyes and there was a quote from Vlado recently, it does the same thing as the BURN value in color mapping settings.
It also does the same thing as burn/highlight compression/whatever you call it does in any tonemapping software or operator.
Can you explain why it whould be so bad to have a tonemapping operator in VFB, instead of directly in the next step in a compositing software?
My issue is that the single BURN operator we have right now is looking quite bland.

If your fierce argument is because I might have used the term color mapping instead of tonemapping some time before, then I admit, it was probably a mistake on my part, as I am artsy-fartsy and not a technical guy. If they are some radically different things, the I should clarify - i want a TONEMAPPING operator in the vfb that has better controls than the current reinhard burn only mush.

I said ALL WORTH OF NOTICE (English: all of those pertaining to a specific category: that of the noteworthy.).
You can find me as many shoddy photographers wedding pictures in fantastic locations as you please, and the argument is still not proven (as particularly you point me to no such interview, and google returns zero on this guy. I think the little town i live in has 2 such photographers too, and only one bread maker!.).
I'm anyway tired of the rush to the lowest possible point of any given issue: it's terrible debate etiquette, logically invalid, and non-actionable, so i'll have no part in it.

No, you didn't say that, you said ALL PROFFESIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS (professional, as in all who make money by taking photographs)
Now you are making an argument using a 'no true scotsmen' fallacy by changing it to "ALL WORTH OF NOTICE" This makes your argument invalid, please look up some common argument fallacies to have a more constructive dialogues in future.

My initial phrase was MOST PHOTOGRAPHERS don't shoot raw (as in people who take a camera in their hand and press the button, ie your granny taking a selfie is included in this group). Nowhere was worth or professionallism mentioned, not to mention all-inclusive blanket statements, you so enjoy.

Frankly, this is the most ridiculous part of our argument, it doesn't matter at all.

As I've been an avid photographer for 15 years and active in various photographic communities over the years, let me explain what the professional photographers use the RAW for:
A) to get out of a bad fix when they miss the exposure or white balance during the initial shot. It's simply not a problem in vray, as you can easily get it right the first time, after all you are doing it right on the big screen you do any further edits on, not a shitty little 3 in screen on back of a camera.
B) Shadow or highlight recovery in tricky lighting situations. This is what the stupid tonemapping operator would do, this is what I want. If the photographers could do righ there after taking the shot on a big screen, they would.
C) Getting multiple exposures for manual blending. Honestly I use it so rarely in cg work it's a non-issue, I can just save the exr if need the possibility.

btw, when you talk about photography, don't throw around a term like CCD with such confidence, it's been long replaced by CMOS sensors for almost a decade

You are: there is no example of repeatable art done without a methodology (even Chaos has rules, go figure.).
Method serves the purpose, frees the mind of the burden of technology (once it has fully embraced the needed one, and prepared properly around a pipeline, whatever that may consist of.), and enables the artist to wholly concentrate on the creative task.
If not, Michelangelo would have thrown rocks at a marble block to try and get the David, but he clearly did not: he rather built on each of his forays, from the Pieta' to the Bacchus, from the David to the Moses, the technology he used as fabled as the results he obtained.
As for any credit i should have on what works and what doesn't, that's for the beholder to decide.

Here you go twisting my words. Nowhere did I mention doing everything in utter chaos without method.
Of course there is a method.

What I am suggesting is take the big useless chunks of marble off the slab right at the quarry (tonemapping done right after the render) take the rest to the workshop and polish the details if needed.
What you are suggesting is that only the whole slab can be taken off the quarry and only once in compositing software can we think of taking off the big chunks.

Your words however make it sound that instead I'm suggesting throwing feces at the slab until something sticks

As for what is art and what is not, that is not for us to decide.
Did you know that Michelangelos David is far from photorealistic? He is tapered vertically to accomodate the viewing from below. Is it a cheap trick to stop the viewers asking about why his head is so small? (modern day analog - clients asking why the nasty burnouts are happening in renders)

No you are right, i am miffed at the feeling of having spent the last decade PRECISELY in this place: between the obvious, objective, and and data-driven, and the arbitrary, haphazard, and unproven.
Between being miffed, and being offensive, there's a huge stretch, and i do not feel i ever crossed the specific threshold.
But no, you do not have the power to change the course of my day in either direction: it's debating on ideas, i like to think, so no blows need being held back, as long as they stay directed to ideas and concepts. And if i get smacked in the face once or twice, by accident or else, ah well, i spilt no blood anyway, and i may learn something from it.

On this we agree.
Time is however limited, and this argument had been settled a decade ago, the sticky threads on this very forums proof of that.
It leaves me wondering if a video would change anything at all for the better, where ten years of stickies, and constant repetition, couldn't.

That's exactly the issue, many of those stickies are a decade old with most things change/removed/improved/hidden in today's vray. Do you think it is encouraging to dig through the irrelevant info to dig out some pearls of wisdom?

[LudvikKoutny]

Some things I've been thinking about past few days:

1, I was just walking around the appartment with my camera shooting random light sources, and indeed, most of them came out quite blown out. At the same time though, I did not see the burnouts with my own eyes. Now I do realize that eyes have highly adaptive exposure, but in many cases, even focusing my center of vision to very dark areas did not make those light sources burn out in peripheral vision. I think that the ultimate goal of photography and cinematography has always been an effort to bring what we see on screen as close to the reality as possible. That's also why we have HDR displays these days, but even on non-HDR 8bit or dithered 6bit displays, I think we should not give up what looks more natural to our eyes for the sake mathematical correctness.

I think that's also why clients often request burnouts to be gone. They know what they see with their own eyes in real world, and they know what they see on the screen does not look the same. They are not burdened by some technical understanding of the matter, which actually makes their judgement of what's photoreal less biased.

Literally, right now, I have a lamp next to my PC turned on, and I have photo of that Lamp of my screen in front of me. The flat white burned out pool around the lamp looks nothing like what I see with my eyes. Coincidentally, applying filmic on top of it brings it much closer. Lastly, while it's true that 8bit monitor can not display nowhere near the high dynamic range of the real world, to me it just makes much more sense to compress that range into what that monitor can display, instead of keeping it clipped to only small section of the range claiming it has to be that way because it is correct.

2, When I actually do not save tone mapping with my picture, and save out just linear EXR, the first thing I do right when I get into fusion is to either compress highlights manually, or throw on some LUT. And only then I am able to start working, because I can actually see what I am doing to the entire range of the image, not just clipped out 8bit segment of it. So it just adds one manual process to the workflow. I still ruin my image regardless, I just always have to ruin it myself, because V-Ray won't ruin it automatically for me.

3, Ok, so let's assume we ruin our images by saving them out with compressed range. What's the worst that can happen? If you already have burned out clouds on the sky brought back by some reinhard/filmic thing, then it's not very likely director will tell you "bring those clouds back a bit" because they are already fully brought back. So only thing he can say is burn them out a bit, in which case, you will take that information, and shift it up out of the range your screen can display. Once you do that, any information there becomes just flush white surface, so you can't really identify with your eyes how much precision does that clipped out part have.

Only thing that I can think of is some features generated out of HDR data, such as glares and flares. But even their intensity is quite relative based on surrounding range, so they could in theory be tweaked to look same as if they were applied on uncompressed input.

Again, to stress my previous point. I am not saying this should happen by default, I am just saying we should have an option to.

[vlado]

I think that's also why clients often request burnouts to be gone. They know what they see with their own eyes in real world, and they know what they see on the screen does not look the same. They are not burdened by some technical understanding of the matter, which actually makes their judgement of what's photoreal less biased. Literally, right now, I have a lamp next to my PC turned on, and I have photo of that Lamp of my screen in front of me. The flat white burned out pool around the lamp looks nothing like what I see with my eyes. Coincidentally, applying filmic on top of it brings it much closer. Lastly, while it's true that 8bit monitor can not display nowhere near the high dynamic range of the real world, to me it just makes much more sense to compress that range into what that monitor can display, instead of keeping it clipped to only small section of the range claiming it has to be that way because it is correct.

I understand that, which is why I said that I would prefer to work on actual proper high dynamic range compression for the VFB, rather than some "filmic" tone mapping which has nothing to do with film at all. The histogram in the VFB was supposed to do something similar, but it's not very user-friendly and the whole process should be more automatic.

Best regards,
Vlado

[LudvikKoutny]

Alright then. I will be quiet from now on, and trust you that you got it covered Thank you.

[vlado]

Well, either that or we should all get high-dynamic range monitors

Best regards,
Vlado

[LudvikKoutny]

Well, I would not be against that, the issue is that while we artists would get them, it would take quite a while before they would be more frequent than 8bit ones So we would then spend all the time making it look nice on HDR screens, but clients would still be looking at it on old TVs and Macbook screens.

[vlado]

Yeah, there is that...

Best regards,
Vlado

[william.morris]

So the conclusion is......