Clamped Colors in 2011: overbright no longer working?

[lxdengar]

Hi all,

it appears that with max 2011 and the new EXR output driver, I can no longer get non-clamped colors out of max scanline. Is this the case?

The previous version of the output plugin (1.21 exr 1.01) had the ability to support realpixel format, but the latest plugin in 2011 does not.

I never understood why fume supported realpixel btw - its a dead format that was a stepping stone to full 16 or 32-bit images. I'm considering rolling back the plugin to see if I can get the non-clamped version back.


Does anyone have a workaround for this issue? What happened to non-clamped colors in 2011?

Thanks!

Mike

[lxdengar]

Pretty quiet around here. Anyone running into this issue? This is a production shot, so I'm hoping to get an answer soon.

[amelnychuk]

Yes I am getting this aswell.

same with the render elements aswell. Very frustrating, specially for the velocity pass. I can mo blur up and to the right lol

-Andrew

[jrand]

Yep me too, running into exactly the same issue, I need z and bad and it looks like a bunch of slices instead of nice gradient, just not enough color info. I feel for the comper as he is the one who has to deal with it.

[sitnisati]

Hello,

Just to confirm, so with the same FumeFX version under max 2010 it works, and under max 2011 it does not ?
I will check it ASAP.

Thanks

Kresimir

[lxdengar]

Hi Kresmir,

I didn't try it on 2010 - I don't have that version readily available. 2008 works, as its using the old 1.1. EXR plug. Anyone have 2010?

Thanks!

m

[sitnisati]

I rendered with finalRender and it worked in both max 2010 and 2011.

Not able to get exr to work with scanline even in 2010.
Under Renderer setting, Scanline has Color Range Limiting - Clamp or Scale,so I am not sure if it can render to 32 bit unclamped floats at all... unless using RealPixel and saving to HDR. Of course, I might be overlooking something as well.

Kresimir

[lxdengar]

Okay I figured it out, Autodesk is being retarded and not following the EXR spec.

In order to get non-clamped color, you MUST have a non-clamped color channel. This effectively means that your beauty image is useless, but there you go. Once fusionworks has somewhere to send the data, all is well.

The retarded part is that this is true of ANYTHING coming out of the scanline renderer. Try a sphere and a light at 10.0. Your render will be clamped to 1. Add a non-clamped EXR channel, and lo and behold, overbright values. 2008 works the way LucasFilm intended it to. 2010-2011: Fail.

It pisses me off that Autodesk is messing up the format like this.

Sorry Kreso, its working. Next time you're in Cali, I'll buy you a beer.

Mike

[sitnisati]

Hi Mike !

It also took me some time to decypher it as it's a mess with the Scanline.
In Scanline you could also save it to .hdr if that format is of any use.

Beer is alway fine ! August will do

Kreso

[lxdengar]

August? Deal.

I think you should still have a conversation with Autodesk, however. The fusionworks velocity channel output is still clamped, and something is still going on with the Z-channel - I couldn't get anything to show up for Z except alpha when using FusionWorks, and had to rely on the EXR channel, which is normalized.

There's something going on with the handoff of data from FusionW to Scanline. Can you ask Autodesk to figure out what's going on at some point?

Mike

[sitnisati]

Yes, velocity is always clamped as it has a scale factor so it always fit into the 0-255 range.
Similar thing happens with Z buffer as it goes from min to max distance.
So, when you render with Scanline and watch FW Z buffer RE, you don't see a gradient ? ... or this is just within the .exr file ?

Kreso

[amelnychuk]

So how do we handle the velocity channel in the comp. Do we push the numbers around so 0-255 would equal -1 to 1 going into a vector blur node?

[sitnisati]

Andrew - something like that, but values are relative, so 255 is not 1, but it's a positive maximum speed value.

Kresimir