Physical Camera + Exponential Color Mapping

[braddewald]

I mostly do daytime interior scenes with a mix of natural and artificial lighting. I was just listening to a CG School class and I'm pretty sure I heard the instructor say not to use exponential color mapping with a "vray camera" because it already has exposure control built in. Is this correct? Could he have meant "vray sun" instead? Because I've definitely been using exponential color mapping along with a vray physical camera... Is this wrong? Is it just for exteriors? Thanks in advance!

[Nic H]

hmm dont know what he is on about, sounds like he has no idea - you can use any colour mapping you want with phys cam, unsure if there is any 'science' im not understanding but i generally use reinhard on low burn values for interiors, which is almost akin to sxponential, i find its an easy way to get soft bright spaces especially if they are white.

[STRAT]

i use vray on c4d, but never use exponential for anything. it's very flat and non contrasty. like Nik i too use reinhard with a 30% (or thereabouts) burn value for interiors.

[aristocratic3d]

Agreed with nic. . exponential color mapping seamed is dull to me.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Yep. I use Reinhard mapping 95% of the time. According to the manual it is a blend between Linear mapping and Exponential mapping. When the burn value is set at 1 it is completely Linear. When it is set at 0 it is completely Exponential. Anywhere in between and it is a combination of the two.

 

It also makes sense that Exponential is dull because if you set the burn at 0 on Reinhard it is very dull because it is compressing the brights so much to keep everything visible.

 

Reinhard is one of the reasons I enjoy using Vray for rendering.

 

EDIT: I have another odd instructor story. When we tried to make a go of mr in production our Revit support company offered to bring one of their Max people in to give us on overview of how to use mr. I don't remember a lot of the details of the class, but I do remember the instructor telling people that they should render against a green background. That way they could extract the background in Photoshop, and replace it with a nice sky. I wanted to slap my head.

Edited November 20, 2010 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[paneli]

Yep. I use Reinhard mapping 95% of the time. According to the manual it is a blend between Linear mapping and Exponential mapping. When the burn value is set at 1 it is completely Linear. When it is set at 0 it is completely Exponential. Anywhere in between and it is a combination of the two.

 

It also makes sense that Exponential is dull because if you set the burn at 0 on Reinhard it is very dull because it is compressing the brights so much to keep everything visible.

 

Reinhard is one of the reasons I enjoy using Vray for rendering.

 

EDIT: I have another odd instructor story. When we tried to make a go of mr in production our Revit support company offered to bring one of their Max people in to give us on overview of how to use mr. I don't remember a lot of the details of the class, but I do remember the instructor telling people that they should render against a green background. That way they could extract the background in Photoshop, and replace it with a nice sky. I wanted to slap my head.

 

You should have slap his nape.

Never he heard of PNG?

[Deetee]

EDIT: I have another odd instructor story. When we tried to make a go of mr in production our Revit support company offered to bring one of their Max people in to give us on overview of how to use mr. I don't remember a lot of the details of the class, but I do remember the instructor telling people that they should render against a green background. That way they could extract the background in Photoshop, and replace it with a nice sky. I wanted to slap my head.

I guess he knows nothing about alpha channel.

[Alyosha]

haha, i guess he came from a video production background or something

[[_Serial_]]

Ahahaha that was nice... something similar happened to me last year watching a seminar in a ATC here in Brazil. The "teacher" say something like: "then you should render the background in a green color (that moment he show us the exactly rgb color hahah) to put a good sky there using Photoshop or AE". We give him a discount 'cause he's a video editor trying to teach us how to use max 4 archviz...

[saeed_r261]

is it OK which I use 0.6 amount for burning in color mapping in rainhard?

[BrianKitts]

if it works good for your scene then yes. I typically recommend staying in linear as long as you can, and if then in the end if for some reason you need to cut back the burn switch to reinhard and dial it down to suit your scene.

 

that being side I recently started working with someone who does interiors by blasting really focused lights in the scene with a low burn level (around .2)......surprisingly because of the focused IES lighting he was using it created a really nice even lighting with good contrast. Not my typical workflow, but hightlights the point I'm trying to make that if it works for your scene then of course it's okay to do it. Go with it.

Edited August 12, 2011 by BrianKitts