Using Carrara Render Layers in Post Work - random thoughts

Headwax

Here is the diffuse pass overlayed on the bare render (both using gamma 1, 100 percdent ambient and one light bulb).

The diffuse pass layer was set to 'multiply' and the opacity lowered to 57 percent.

I used affinity photo tone mapping to finish off the image to bring out the darks etc.

In Affinity Photo tone mapping means you can compress or extend the tonal range (so darken the highlights if you want and lighten the darks etc)

You can also play with the local contrast which can bring out pores in skin etc,

 

Headwax

Finally we fill a new layer with 50 percent grey and take into fotosketcher (free program)  http://fotosketcher.blogspot.com/

There we add a canvas texture to the grey layer and bring that texture back and place it over our image.

We make the canvas texture 'overlay' mode. That means that anything darker than 50 percent grey will darken the underlying image.

Anything lighter will lighten the unferlying image.

We then paint in the eye highlights. The highlight itself will be a spot of light reflected from the cornea.

That spotr of light is reflected by the cornea and hits the iris as a softer more diffuse light.

Other stuff we can fix later in this image is the atrocious hair (I chose it because it looks so artificial) - we would use the object render pass for that to select just the hair.

We alo need to fix the teeth which are too white because  of the 100 percent ambient light.

WendyLuvsCatz

who said we cannot use ambient

it exists

I sometimes use 100% ambient for toony stuffs Shoot me!

it just might look better without ambient in many cases if using fill and keylights, IBL, Sky, Indirect lighting or a lightdome

 

Headwax

Ha ha oh yes,previous gods have said it.

of course carraras base ambient is 20 percent - just to make life easier for those of us whoe are newly borne into the 3d world?

make thare refracted and not refkected in my last post. 

Dartanbeck

Headwax said:

Ha ha oh yes,previous gods have said it.

of course carraras base ambient is 20 percent - just to make life easier for those of us whoe are newly borne into the 3d world?

make thare refracted and not refkected in my last post. 

That was the main reason for my making my own default Base scene file. But it originally had the Ambient turned off. Now it has a dark blue green set at 5. That base is primarily for initial setup of scenery scenes for me, and after I get the lighting set that Ambient often gets turned back off (due to Rosie's hair, which doesn't like Ambient one little bit!)

But for speeedy animation renders, I like how a subtle us of ambient can pull the blackness out of the deep shadows.

Dartanbeck

I love that Normal Map testbed thread! Well done then, and thanks for reminding me about it!

DesertDude

Headwax said:

Here's a play I had today. All the images were rendered with 100 percent ambient.  Bare in mind I am designing these images so I can work on them in post.

 

I know that we are not supposed to use much ambient - but I don't agree ! (looking for a quick way to render and also looking for an illustration style)

 

There was one light source (a bulb). I was looking at doing a shadows pass and overlaying it on either the clean pass, or the ambient pass to demonstrate what you could do with the two layers.

Anyways the shadow pass turned out like crap (i'll go back and do it with a distance light) .

It was howevere good for selecting highlights and darks so I could make the shadows more eg purple. etc. You could also add a gausian blur to make it more subtle.

I did get some happy (unexpected) results though by changing the gamma settings. 

The low gamma setting of 1 gave me much more detail in render diffuse render passes, than did the gamma 3 setting. Though it blew out the highlights in the 'bare render'.

The pictures are big if you want to click on them.

 

 

 

 

Oh wow, look what has appeared in the last 12 hours, I need time to absorb. This is awesome everyone!

Headwax said:
> I know that we are not supposed to use much ambient - but I don't agree ! (looking for a quick way to render and also looking for an illustration style)

pth...as others have already commented, and you sure as well know, rules are meant to be broken, so long as one has an understanding of such rules, and then breaks them with a purpose. Or not...

 

Dartanbeck said:

That was the main reason for my making my own default Base scene file. But it originally had the Ambient turned off.

 

Cool, yeah, I have 2 base scenes I choose from when I start something new in Carrara, with settings I prefer, and such.
Took me a long time to remember to Save As > 'MyNewSceneWhatever'  from the get go. Doh!

DesertDude

Dartanbeck said:

Very Cool! See, I don't truly understand entirely. I mean, I realize the process of creating normal maps from ultra-high density models to lorez, at least somewhat, but not how the multipass normal output works. When I saw it, it looks like a normal map, so I wanted to try and use it for visual deformation.

The thing is, in the example I was giving with the background globe, we don't really need to deform it at all - it's just a matte painting. Hmmm... used to manipulate lighting eh? Interesting!

I am not expert, infact, this is the first time I have ventured to try using the Normal Pass to manipulate lighting. There is a BIG caveat - it won't change cast shadows or spec hits etc. It's meant to make minor tweaks to lighting, even though you can make seemingly big adjustments. (Although at work yesterday I was practically jumping out of my skin brimming with ideas of how we could do that.) But first, I needed to learn to crawl before walking or running.

For my tests I am using / learning HitFilm, so there are some HitFilm steps sprinkled in here just FYI...
One should be able to do this in any compositing software, no special plugins needed. I watched a video tutorial on YouTube of how to do this in After Effects, so it's not like I pulled this technique out of thin air, lol.

Let's begin!

OK, here is this guy snail I made recently - he looks kind of grumpy since I just woke him up.
From Carrara I rendered a 'Beauty Pass', and, using Carrara's Multipass options I selected a Normal Vector pass. I also made an Alpha Matte from Carrara. Why? Because I wanted to isolate the snail, and the color of the background of the Normal pass caused problems. If it were a whole scene then probably not necessary.

Of course I could have rendered the snail Beauty Pass with 'Render Alpha Channel' ticked in the Render Room and made my own Alpha Matte in post, but since we're Carrara-centric here I made my own Alpha Matte by turning the Backdrop to pure white under Scene > Backdrop > Color and then turning off the lights. It will be black on white, but easily inverted in post if you prefer.

And here are the isolated images with the Alpha Matte applied. To do that in HitFilm, it's an effect under Keying > Matte Enhancement > Set Matte

For the composite I dropped a pink background plane in to show the snail is isolated. Also for that composite I had to add a 'Remove Color Matting' effect, found under the same Keying > Matte Enhacement menu to get rid of the slight black artifact outline.

In a new Composite I added the matted Normal Pass and the Beauty Pass below it. Then to the Normal Pass I added the Channel Swapper effect, found under Effects > Channel > Channel Swapper. I switched the Take Red From, Take Green From and Take Blue From all to Red and left the Take Alpha at default.

I then made 2 more duplicates of that layer, and then changed the settings of the Channel Swapper to Take Red From, Take Green From and Take Blue From to Green, and, for the third layer, Take Red From, Take Green From, Take Blue From to Blue.

This is what each layer looks like with the Channel Swapper effect applied, isolating the Red, Green and Blue channels respectively.

 

Then I changed the Blend mode for each layer to Multiply by right clicking the layer, Blend > Multiply.

Finally, under each layer I could change the Opacity, Transform > Opacity, and this will change the lighting based on the X, Y Z vectors of the Normal Pass...if I'm using the correct verbage. Final image is a grid of the results for each R, G, B layer showing 0%, 50% and 100% Opacity for each.

You could also change the Blend mode to Screen or Add to brighten rather than darken.

Like I said, it won't change the rendered shadows or cast shadows, spec hits and stuff, but allows you to make some lighting tweaks. Also opens up lots of other possibilities...

 

 

 

DesertDude

And now that some time has passed and I've taken a computer break the Normal pass like this could be applied to a Material Diffuse pass with various opacities and wouldn't look so muddy. More later...

DesertDude

Headwax said:

Dartanbeck said:

...A Quick Look inside DaVinci Resolve in making Introducing Rosie 5

I was a bit timid on using the node-based workflow in Fusion. DaVinci Resolve 15, which now includes Fusion in its own page, seems to be a lot easier for a newbie like me to use. Now it's just a matter of dreaming up what to do and just do it!

Here's my first tiptoe steps into it

You'll see how I render the scene and the characters in the same scene with the same camera, but in separate renders. The same can be done with any of Carrara's many effects - or even doing other renders using GMIC or whatever you want.

very impressive Dart - especially for a first go!

 

 

Agree, that's some impressive work. So awesome that software is all now free. FREE!
However, nodes make me want to self medicate and just turn on the stereo, lol. You are brave.

DesertDude

Dartanbeck said:

Background Sphere Basic Instructions:

1. Download either of the last two images, Actual Render 01a and/or Render with Ambient Occlusion. Click on them for full rez, if you like.
2. Create a sphere in Carrara and set the size to 500ft or whatever 
3. In the shader, apply the map you chose to download into the glow channel
4. On the sphere in the assemble room, top of instances tray, deselect Casts and Recieves Shadows

Extra Credit

• Try nesting in other elements to other channels of the shader or even onto separate spheres to see what you come up with.
• I ran the UV Coordinates pass for use in Fusion, as it can be used on Fusion's volumetric fog - but I haven't gotten that far yet.

This is way cool, nested spheres with maps concept. More experiments to play with Carrara, thanks for the ideas Dartanbeck!

DesertDude

Headwax said:

Looking at the gamma 1 diffuse render pass gave me what looked like a great start for the shadows - they were soft and pleasing.

I knew I could use them to work up the 'bare render"

Oddly they didnt seem to have much to do with the real shadow pass.

Luckily because, as mentioned, the shadow pass was ugly.

I am not sure where Carrara is getting the data for the darks in the diffuse pass?

 

It's probably me but I always found Carrara's Shadow pass to be weird and clunky chunky. I think it should be called a 'Cast Shadow' pass.
There doesn't seem to be a straight up 'self shadow' pass, or,  what may also be known as 'form shadows'.
For that I create a simple White Shader - just pure white in the Color Channel and turn everything else to 'None'. Apply that Shader to everything in your scene.
Turn you backdrop to pure white as well.
Save as a seperate file(!).
Render that out and apply to your liking in post.

I'm pretty sure it was you who gave me the tip to render Cast Shadows using a white backdrop and turning the Keylight up to 1000% or so, dialing down to one's taste and maybe using soft shadows. Then apply that ontop of the form shadow pass? It's been a while since I have tried.

Beautiful work as usual Headwax!

Edited to add: And turn off 'Casts shadows' for all the objects!

Dartanbeck

Wow Desert Dude! That is very cool! Thanks for that tutorial!

DesertDude

Cool, thanks Dartanbeck

UnifiedBrain

Dartanbeck said:

Headwax said:

now I have the sphere shaded do I render it with a spherical camera - not sure where you are going with this in relation to postwork? 

Nope. See, when using Gamma Correction = 2.2, background/backdrop images do Not get automatically degamma treatment, like all other image maps do - so they become washed out.

Use this sphere as a background for your scene. It will add to Global Illumination, if used as well as Indirect Lighting. But otherwise just makes for a nice background to work with - and it can be animated, scaled, rotated, etc.,

Further, we can introduce other maps that I've included in many different ways for many different effects - even psychedelic.

Ideas:

Operations > Mixer will give two sources with a shader channel for blending the two. Use any of the maps as the blending shader and any of the maps (or something completely different) in the two sources.

Try the Normal map in the bump channel, set to Normal Map and crank bump amplitutude up to 100

Use Multi-Layer Element features to add the Ambient Occulusion map to the color channel

Try the Depth Pass as the blending shader with source 1 as black or None, and source 2 as one of the two renders. This will make the texture fade to black the deeper it goes according to the depth pass.

Overlay some fractal noise using the Atmosphere pass

Perhaps go on an acid trip by blending Normal Pass with UV Coordinates pass using Fractal Noise as the blending shader! 

======================================================

I use the Glow channel as my color channel, so that I don't have to use lights on it. It simply uses the shader as the scene illumination. The effect varies depending upon whether or not we also put this into the Color channel, which is my default method. I normally have a map multilied by itself in both Color and Glow. I use the Source 2 map in the multiplier to adjust darkness if it's too bright.

I also experiment a lot with using any sort of map as the controlling shader of a color gradient, which can make some very interesting results.

I tried it and it worked well, thanks for the maps and instructions!.  It helped that I had already followed a similar procedure with your starry sky freebie in previous renders.

I think there are two tracks going on here - how we can use render passes in Carrara, and how we can use them in postwork.  Both are interesting to explore.

DesertDude

As I suspected, in retrospect, Material Diffuse + Normal pass dialed in is way better, in my humble opinion:

Here we go, in order, Material Diffuse from Carrara, then the Normal pass + Material Diffuse in a composite R, G B in sucsseive order using the outlined method in HitFilm.

Cheers

 

DesertDude

Of course, we tweak lighting, and camera, and composition et al seemingly forever in 3D, but nice to know we can super tweak stuff in post. All those passes can be mixed in post, it's not one or the other.

UnifiedBrain

Umm, render passes might be a good Challenge requirement. :)

UnifiedBrain

The Splendid Dank of Dartanbeck's Cave

I had a go at Dart's cave pass today.  Applied it to a sphere and the glow channel, as instructed.

Tried for a Headwaxian quality.  Even broke out K4. :)  This is the quick and dirty (but not dirty enough, I'm afraid) version done in Carrara, no postwork.

Stezza

awesome stuff this 

 

my simple 20 cents worth is:

I like to have my ever-changing ambient values with orange and at least one distant light with blue 

when I use normal maps I always start off at a setting of 105 bump

Diomede

Here is how I combined coverage, shadow, and a GMIC BW filter.

Suggestions welcome.

Here was the straight render.

Coverage Pass

Shadow Pass

A BW filter from GMIC using Philemo's GMIC plugin

And then a composite

WendyLuvsCatz

I don't so much for postwork (except a depth layer to add light beams once in Hitfilm) but I do render layers to create maps for textures to use in Carrara, terrains with vegetation for example, will do an orthographic shot from above of a replicated foliage one to use as a texture with a normal map on a plain one.

Diomede

Here is similar workflow but includes an NPR render with just outline checked.

As always, suggesitons welcome

The attached are

Straight render, coverage pass, depth pass, shadow pass, NPR outline render, and composite

 

Diomede

A few other things I do from time to time are

(a) make black and white shaders for eveyrhting in the scene, sometimes using the existing texture map to drive a B/W gradient as Dart described above

(b) to include strand based hair in a toon image, use Philemo's convert hair to mesh plugin.  The lines can still be too dense making the hair black - great of desired, but if not use "Toon override" in hair object properties

(c) I sometimes use the volumetric multipasses to include strand based hair with NPR renders

Diomede

Challenge 44 was a multipass challenge - Any Element, Not Just the 5th.

WIP here - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/295956/carrara-challenge-44-any-element-not-just-the-5th-wip-thread/p1

Entries here - https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/302651/entry-thread-carrara-challenge-44-any-element-not-just-the-5th-daz/p1

Headwax

Dartanbeck said:

Headwax said:

Ha ha oh yes,previous gods have said it.

of course carraras base ambient is 20 percent - just to make life easier for those of us whoe are newly borne into the 3d world?

make thare refracted and not refkected in my last post. 

That was the main reason for my making my own default Base scene file. But it originally had the Ambient turned off. Now it has a dark blue green set at 5. That base is primarily for initial setup of scenery scenes for me, and after I get the lighting set that Ambient often gets turned back off (due to Rosie's hair, which doesn't like Ambient one little bit!)

But for speeedy animation renders, I like how a subtle us of ambient can pull the blackness out of the deep shadows.

 

Dartanbeck said:

I love that Normal Map testbed thread! Well done then, and thanks for reminding me about it!

pleasure about the thread, greeat idea to have setup scene @Dartanbeck et @DesertDude - I need to do that with the pseudo gi illumination rig one day

 

Headwax

DesertDude said:

Dartanbeck said:

 

Finally, under each layer I could change the Opacity, Transform > Opacity, and this will change the lighting based on the X, Y Z vectors of the Normal Pass...if I'm using the correct verbage. Final image is a grid of the results for each R, G, B layer showing 0%, 50% and 100% Opacity for each.

You could also change the Blend mode to Screen or Add to brighten rather than darken.

Like I said, it won't change the rendered shadows or cast shadows, spec hits and stuff, but allows you to make some lighting tweaks. Also opens up lots of other possibilities...

 

 

 

really great ex[lication of using those xyz vectors thank you - interesting the use of the apha mask- I am lazy and would have used the obj pass to isolate the snail !

 

Headwax

DesertDude said:

Headwax said:

Looking at the gamma 1 diffuse render pass gave me what looked like a great start for the shadows - they were soft and pleasing.

I knew I could use them to work up the 'bare render"

Oddly they didnt seem to have much to do with the real shadow pass.

Luckily because, as mentioned, the shadow pass was ugly.

I am not sure where Carrara is getting the data for the darks in the diffuse pass?

 

It's probably me but I always found Carrara's Shadow pass to be weird and clunky chunky. I think it should be called a 'Cast Shadow' pass.
There doesn't seem to be a straight up 'self shadow' pass, or,  what may also be known as 'form shadows'.
For that I create a simple White Shader - just pure white in the Color Channel and turn everything else to 'None'. Apply that Shader to everything in your scene.
Turn you backdrop to pure white as well.
Save as a seperate file(!).
Render that out and apply to your liking in post.

I'm pretty sure it was you who gave me the tip to render Cast Shadows using a white backdrop and turning the Keylight up to 1000% or so, dialing down to one's taste and maybe using soft shadows. Then apply that ontop of the form shadow pass? It's been a while since I have tried.

Beautiful work as usual Headwax!

Edited to add: And turn off 'Casts shadows' for all the objects!

thanks for that, glad it's not just me who fibds the shadow pass clunky - will sit down and experiment with different light types when I get a chance - had good results in past by rendering with different lights on the same scene and then saving the resulting shadows passes and adding them together in post with a spot of blur as well from memory

 

Headwax

UnifiedBrain said:

The Splendid Dank of Dartanbeck's Cave

I had a go at Dart's cave pass today.  Applied it to a sphere and the glow channel, as instructed.

that looks great, k4 looks scared as hell :)

UnifiedBrain said:

Tried for a Headwaxian quality.  Even broke out K4. :)  This is the quick and dirty (but not dirty enough, I'm afraid) version done in Carrara, no postwork.

 

Headwax

Stezza said:

awesome stuff this 

 

my simple 20 cents worth is:

I like to have my ever-changing ambient values with orange and at least one distant light with blue 

when I use normal maps I always start off at a setting of 105 bump

good tips, thanks Stezza - wouldnt have thought of using that orange/blue complimentary conbination - on my list to try