Multi-Layered .EXR - The revival...

[Pierre Schiller]

Hi team. I know this has been posted a lot of times, but I was wondering if AD did ever fixed

the issue with multilayered .exr images on a single file from MR? (mental ray).

I know all other render motors work normally when rendering layered .exr images (arnold, vray, etc..)

But SI 2015 can already render .exr layered image (zdepth,normals, etc.) on a single file?

Store in channels work well... I guess, but I was asking this if there´s any possibility to work

those layered passes directly from the render manager?

Thanks.

David.

--

Portfolio 2013

Cinema & TV production

Video Reel

[Pierre Schiller]

bump.

[Pierre Schiller]

bump

[Jens Lindgren]

Not many people use multilayer exr because it's slower to read than splitting it out to different files.

This slowness is solved with EXR 2.0 but Softimage isn't using that.

Don't really know if it's possible with MR but in Arnold you simply name the framebuffers the same and it gets merged to one file. Maybe that's how it works in MR as well.

/Jens

--

Jens Lindgren

------------------------------------

VFX Supervisor & Lead TD

Magoo 3D Studios

[Jason S]

  
   On 08/27/15 8:44, Jens Lindgren wrote:
   This slowness is solved with EXR 2.0 but Softimage isn't using that.

Correction:   MentalRay in SI may not be using that,

but Arnold, Redshift, and 3Delight in SI do   (among many other updates)

Including things like VDB support etc...
(None of which would have happened had there not been any usage/demand (more than a year post EOL)

Recent changes (2015) for Arnold & 3Delight for Softimage,
(Redshift updates would just be too long to list)


Arnold for Softimage

3.8 July 13, 2015

• Faster export times overall on Windows (up to 20% faster).
  
  
• Faster export of polygon meshes (up to 35% faster).
  
  
• Much faster export of ICE instances (up to 5x faster) and ICE primitive cylinders, discs, cones, boxes (up to 3x faster).
  
  
• Faster rendering when using SItoA shaders on Windows (up to 15% faster).
  

3.7 June 10 2015

• Faster cutout texture mapped opacity, with more accurate renders (in previous versions, an object was rendered more transparent when it was further away from the camera).
  
  
• Multiple scattering for volumes: Indirect light in volumes now supports an arbitrary number of bounces instead of being fixed to one bounce.
  
  
• Per-light volume contribution: A volume contribution scaling parameter was added to lights, similar to the existing diffuse and specular parameters.
  
  
• Deep volume output support: Volumes are now visible in deep renders
  (note that older atmosphere shaders and volumetric mattes are not supported yet).
  
  
• The volume property now shows the names of available grids in VDB files.
  
  
• Faster UDIMs: UDIMs accessed through the built-in image shader node now internally use texture handles, which helps improve multi-threading performance.
  

3.6  April 27 2015

• Optimized volume rendering
• Fixed long-standing artifacts with large ray marching steps
• Faster volume caches (such as OpenVDB) in IPR

3.5 March 09 2015

• Transmission component in the hair shader.
• Support for the Volume primitive as a property and volume_sample shaders added. Mattes now work with volumes as well.

3.4 January 16 2015

• Faster Curves and Volumes.
• Opacity controls added to the Skin Shader.
• The autobump detail enhancement now works for procedurally displaced polymeshes even when there are no UV texture coordinates.
  
  

3Delight for Softimage  Changelog

4.0.49 - 2015-07-24

• OpenVDB.
• Fixed output to Preview window when all the Render Channels are disabled.
• All the lights are hidden and the raytracing is disabled when Main Render Channel is not enabled.
• Display first enabled Render Channel in the Preview window (it was unconditional displaying of Main Render Pass).
  

4.0.48 - 2015-07-23

• Added 3Delight Hair material.
• More detailed profiling.

4.0.45 - 2015-06-04

• Fixed light visibility in IPR
• Default SSS Algorithm is Ray-tracing
• No limit for GI and SSS samples

4.0.43 - 2015-03-12

• Output rendering progress to stdout
• Fixed mesh lighting in RIB export
• Fixed float precision in fog

4.0.41 - 2015-02-21

• Faster reflections when using multiple bounces.

4.0.40 - 2015-02-13

• Ignore the Smooth Subdivision Threshold if the object has displacement
• Don't skip environment map rendering if there are no envmap files
• Fixed bug when a light can't be changed after user changes Interactive Rendering Type
• Support for JSON statistics
• ESC key stops the rendering

4.0.38 - 2015-01-06

• Fixed depth in deep output with path tracer.

Also an SI|3Delight feature list, showing how tight integration is,
(arguably 'tighter' than Arnorld and Redshift which are already considered extremely well intergrated)

As a cost-effective solution (notwithstanding the first free license)
and since pathtracing was introduced, as an easy/worry-free (Arnold-like) solution (only slightly slower than Arnold for similar noise levels)
also not only supporting, but excelling at 'specialty' things like hair/fur, rendering *tons* of particles, and things you never thought would have worked, let alone work well, (also mentionning EXR 2.0 at the end)

Cheers!

Integration with Softimage  

Great care has been taken to ensure a seamless integration with Softimage:

Complete Render Tree support

3Delight for Softimage fully supports Softimage’s render trees (including compounds) and all materials.

ICE Support 

Point Clouds and ICE attributes are fully supported and efficiently rendered.

Stand-Ins

3Delight for Softimage fully supports stand-ins for efficient rendering of large data sets.

Softimage Properties Compatibility

3Delight for Softimage recognizes all the common rendering properties so that its behavior is as close as possible to Softimage’s internal renderer.

Rich Geometry Support

Support of all Softimage geometry with the added benefit of perfectly smooth rendering of Subdivisions and NURBS (no tessellation or polygonal edges at any detail level).

Toon rendering and Inking 

All toon shaders are supported and the ink lens shader is also supported. 3Delight for Softimage is able to render beautifully anti-aliased outlines, fast.

Hair	Hair is rendered using 3Delight’s efficient curve primitive. Linear, quadratic and cubic curves are all supported. Hair instancing is fully supported as well.
Polygons	All types of polygons are supported. Also, polygonal geometry with a subdivision step greater than 1 will be rendered as a smooth subdivision surface. Edges and vertices tagged as “hard” are rendered properly.
Point Clouds	All particle shapes are supported with proper shading. 3Delight for Softimage can take advantage of 3Delight’s lightweight particles to render extremely large clouds of point-shaped particles.
NURBS	All NURBS surfaces are supported. Trim curves on surfaces are also fully supported and rendered to sub-pixel accuracy.
Curves	3Delight for Softimage can render Softimage curves of any shape and degree. Curves are smoothed to sub-pixel accuracy.

 

Main Features of 3Delight for Softimage

Powerful Rendering Engine

Supporting both path-tracing and REYES algorithms. Path-tracing allows for real time modifications of the camera, the lights and the materials.

Fast Indirect Illumination and HDRI

A novel two-pass algorithm allows for efficient rendering multi-bounce indirect illumination. Environment sampling (HDRI) works well even with the very high dynamic range data without the need to blur the environment maps.

Motion Blur and Depth of Field

Multi-Segment motion blur and realistic camera shutter simulation contribute to high quality rendered images. Compared to other rendering software, motion blur in 3Delight for Softimage is fast. Depth of field is fully supported and simulates a realistic camera bokeh.

High Quality Anti-Aliasing

Edge anti-aliasing, motion blur and depth of field quality are all controlled using very simple and predictable options. Contrary to other rendering software, increasing pixel samples for higher quality anti-aliasing does not affect performance significantly.

Geometric Displacements

Displacements are efficiently rendered to sub-pixel accuracy.  

Subsurface Scattering

Automatic subsurface scattering can be enabled on a per-object basis and delivers impressive results, fast. All standard Softimage materials can be used without modification to achieve subsurface scattering effects.

High Quality Fur Rendering

Deep Shadow Map technology provides production grade quality and performance.

Multi-Channel EXR and Deep Output

Ability to output "deep data" as OpenEXR 2.0 files. Compatible with Nuke.

[Jens Lindgren]

Yeah you're right. But just using exr 2.x isn't enough to ensure multi-layered files are read fast. You have to save the exr in a specific way.

From Nukes help:

Notes on Rendering OpenEXR Files

Nuke supports multi-part OpenEXR 2.0.1 files, which allow you to store your channels, layers, and views in separate parts of the file. Storing the data this way can make loading .exr files faster, as Nuke only has to access the part of the file that is requested rather than all parts. However, for backwards compatibility, you also have the option to render your .exr files as single-part images.

To set how the data is stored in your rendered .exr file, open the Write properties and set interleave to:

• channels, layers and views - Write channels, layers, and views into the same part of the rendered .exr file. This creates a single-part file to ensure backwards compatibility with earlier versions of Nuke and other applications using an older OpenEXR library.

• channels and layers - Write channels and layers into the same part of the rendered .exr file, but separate views into their own part. This creates a multi-part file and can speed up Read performance, as Nuke only has to access the part of the file that is requested rather than all parts.

• channels - Separate channels, layers, and views into their own parts of the rendered .exr file. This creates a multi-part file and can speed up Read performance if you work with only a few layers at a time.

So to have the same speed with multi-layered exr that you have with separate exr files, you have to use exr 2.x and only then you have the choice to save a file in what Nuke call channels and layers (fast) or channels (faster) mode. But this breaks backwards compatibility so the files can not be opened in applications that don't support exr 2.

[Jason S]

Indeed so it seems! 

and still looks very new because each renderer's output options (at least in the docs) make no mention of "interleave options" or the like.

So I wonder what are generally the defaults for Multichannel EXR outputs. (hum...)

[Schoenberger]

Hi

 

>make no mention of "interleave options" or the like.

The "interleave option" is not what you are searching for.

It is the "multi-part" that needs to be enabled. This way Nuke can read a part instead of the whole file.

The interleave is just a setting which layers/channels get into a part.

If your renderer or conversion tool writes multi-part images and you do not have any interleave option, then it is one AOV/render layer into one part.

 

Afaik no renderer does this at the moment. Compability reasons.

I have written a test app to print how your .exr file is organized, this can be used to check what kind of .exr your renderer writes. I have to check if it requires a license or not, otherwise you could use it.

 

 

Holger Schönberger
technical director
The day has 24 hours, if that does not suffice, I will take the night

 

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From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Jason S
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2015 8:04 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Multi-Layered .EXR - The revival...

[Jason S]

Hum! interesting. So not to confuse multi-part with multi-channel!

And until multi-part  would become more common-place (question of time no doubt) , you could use a unique render manager with one of many unique features of converting your outputs to multipart EXR's as images are written. :)

EXR Crop and EXR 2.0 Multi-Part Speed up compositing by huge factors, for one animation feature the speed gain was 100x (Depends on how much emtpy space your image has and how many layers the EXR file has _______________________ 3. If you use Nuke 8, then enable "Convert to EXR 2.0 Multi-Part images" in rrConfig, tab Image. This has an huge effect if you render Exr files with many render layers/elements (e.g. beauty, AO,  specular, ...) If you load one layer/element from an Exr v1.0 files in Nuke, then Nuke has to load all layers, it loads the whole file. If you load one layer/element from an Exr v2.0 files in Nuke, then Nuke loads only the required layer.

[Pierre Schiller]

BTW: I went to try 3delight but it´s still limited to a 4core process (like when they released it back on 2011). So such unfortunate event.

I thought I could use 8 cores now. But no.

Toon renders (even on 4core) render instantaneously. That´s a plus.
:(

cheers.

[Schoenberger]

Ok, if you download the latest RR version 7.0.26 after around 15:00 today (DE time), then the application rrVerifyExrModes will work just fine in demo mode. (Win and Linux only atm)

 

It will print

1) scanline or tiled

2) datatype (half/full float)

3) cropped?

4) deep image?

5) number of channels and parts

6) channel names grouped into parts

 

 

Holger Schönberger
technical director
The day has 24 hours, if that does not suffice, I will take the night

 

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From: softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:softimag...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Schoenberger
Sent: Saturday, August 29, 2015 1:50 PM
To: soft...@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: RE: Multi-Layered .EXR - The revival...