MegaPixel Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 I'm trying to find a streamlined process of getting not just standard Render Elements over to Photoshop, but individual material elements isolated and into Photoshop as well. Most of you have probably seen some online interactive color swapping and material swapping tools and that is what I'm attempting to create. I need a way of isolating not just paint colors on the walls and such, but material selections on the floors, cabinets, appliances, etc.. I noticed that Cebas has a plug-in called "PSD Manager" available which is designed to automate the reassembly of the standard Render Elements together in Photoshop but will it also allow me to what I'm looking to do? I'd love some feedback - Thanks Mega Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 PSD Manager is AWESOME! I use Vray though, and unfortunately psd manager doesn't work with Vrays G Buffer channels (or at least I dont think), but it does still let you seperate different objects by giving you channels for as many different objects as you want. So basically for me, I render out the single image and then I run the psd manager pass which takes just a few seconds. Then you have total control in Photoshop about which objects/materials you want to adjust. The only thing is that you don't get perfect antialiasing, which is only really noticeable at smaller resolutions. So if you change an object from green to red in photoshop, you may still see a slight outline of the original green at the fringes. But again, for final resolution size, it's usually not a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fernando Lino Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 easy and cheap solution would be....creating by yourself the same view and render the image by color (without materiales)...so you'll be able to to used it like a alpha channel. check this out http://67.15.36.49/team/Tutorials/livingroom_chen/livingroom_03.asp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaPixel Posted August 11, 2005 Author Share Posted August 11, 2005 Fernando, are you aware of the process he used to create that color alpha? I think if I were to take that approach, I would have to duplicate the scene and put 100% self illum. materials of different colors on every group of surfaces I wanted to isolate. Unless there is an easier way? Tim, How exactly do the layers or "elements" come into Photoshop and what steps do you take in MAX to setup the PSD Manager elements? Is it just a matter of assigning a unique "G buffer" channel to each material in the material editor that you want to tag for isolation or...? Thanks - Mega Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted August 11, 2005 Share Posted August 11, 2005 It's easy, all you do is tell psd manager which objects you would like it to create layers for and you're done. I usually just add all the objects so I can choose which ones to work on once I get in PS. Here is a screenshot of part of the psd manager interface. It is added under the 'effects' tab. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Saunders Posted August 15, 2005 Share Posted August 15, 2005 PSD Manager is AWESOME! I use Vray though...QUOTE] Tim, i know this thread is a couple weeks old, but i've got a couple questions. i saw how you had different objects in the layer under the pds manager rollout. and you said psd manager doesn't work with vrays g-buffer, but can you still render a full reflection pass? not just the objects themselves? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 Tim, have you tried the PSD manager object pass with Vray distributed rendering? I would be really interested to know if it works. Craig Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrCAD Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 have you tried DrapeFX ? it does what you require mega... btw it works regardless of the rendering engine you are using..give it a try. http://www.drapefx.com here's an alter of a vray rendered scene with drapefx http://www.forumdesk.drapefx.com/viewtopic.php?t=28 cheers meher Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Saunders Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 have you tried DrapeFX ? meher, being able to adjust materials is one thing, but the main thing i am concerned about is having a seperate layer for adjusting the reflections and shadows. this is what psd manager gives you. if you want a stronger reflection you just drag an aditional layer of reflection in photoshop. not sure if it works with vray though. thats why i was hoping tim nelson would pick up on this thread again and fill us in on that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 meher, being able to adjust materials is one thing, but the main thing i am concerned about is having a seperate layer for adjusting the reflections and shadows. this is what psd manager gives you. if you want a stronger reflection you just drag an aditional layer of reflection in photoshop. not sure if it works with vray though. thats why i was hoping tim nelson would pick up on this thread again and fill us in on that. I doubt that will work with Vray because you are no longer using raytrace for reflections but I will give it a shot and let you know. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Saunders Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 so craig, what is vray's distributed rendering? is it rendering elements as seperate passes such as reflect-refract, shadow, model, background, etc? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MegaPixel Posted August 16, 2005 Author Share Posted August 16, 2005 I just wanted to let you guys know that I decided to purchase the PSD Manager. It works Great! - Perfect for what I'm doing. It should improve my post production workflow all around. Thanks for all of the commentary - Mega Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 I just wanted to let you guys know that I decided to purchase the PSD Manager. It works Great! - Perfect for what I'm doing. It should improve my post production workflow all around. Great! It's sure been a lifesaver for me too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Saunders Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 yeah i know its sweet, but can you render a seperate reflection pass with vray? i would sure love to save all that time by rendering the seperate pass. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 yeah i know its sweet, but can you render a seperate reflection pass with vray? i would sure love to save all that time by rendering the seperate pass. If you enable the vray frame buffer and then in the g-buffer/color mapping menu, highlight the reflection channel it will work. That doesn't have anything to do with PSD Manager though. But what I haven't figured out is how to save the rendering without reflections and be able to add them in a seperate layer. There is no good tutorial on how to manage all the channels in Vray, so I dunno. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Saunders Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 it sounds like you are able to get the benefit of enhancing your images in ps, but not the benefit of the speed of rendering the different passes, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted August 16, 2005 Share Posted August 16, 2005 it sounds like you are able to get the benefit of enhancing your images in ps, but not the benefit of the speed of rendering the different passes, right? Yeah, more or less. I'm not super concerned with the speed since I am not doing animations yet, but I would still love to have a better handle on elements and compositing them together, etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted August 17, 2005 Share Posted August 17, 2005 But what I haven't figured out is how to save the rendering without reflections and be able to add them in a seperate layer. There is no good tutorial on how to manage all the channels in Vray, so I dunno. Tim have you seen this: http://www.spot3d.com/vray/help/VRayHelp150beta/examples_gbuffer.htm#ex2 I found it very useful for understanding how to composit Vray channels Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Ramsay Posted August 17, 2005 Share Posted August 17, 2005 so craig, what is vray's distributed rendering? is it rendering elements as seperate passes such as reflect-refract, shadow, model, background, etc? Distributed rendering is when the software splits a single frame rendering task between multiple machines. Each machine renders part of the image then all these pieces of image get stitched back together to make one final image on your main workstation. It can seriously cut down render times but Vray elements don't currently work with DR Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Saunders Posted September 2, 2005 Share Posted September 2, 2005 somewhat old post, still wondering though. does vray advanced have render elements (such as reflection, refraction, shadow, etc. passes)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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