[Bf-committers] Render and Scene Panel Audit?

[Guillermo Espertino (Gez)]

El 26/09/12 18:38, Troy Sobotka escribió:
> Suggestions:
>
> 1) Migrate Alpha to the Output panel where the other alpha oriented
> output factors are stored.
> 2) Migrate Color Unpremultiply to either the Output panel or the Color
> Management panel.
Also I think the "sky" option should be re-evaluated. Being the default, 
it does more harm than good, because it's completely useless for 
compositing, and RGBA images created with it will have all its 
semi-transparent pixels contaminated with the sky color, rendering them 
useless for using in other applications without some sort of background 
color removal (like After Effect's "premultiplied with color" option in 
the interpret footage dialog).
In my opinion the sky background should be an option attached to the 
type of output. If it's RGBA, then sky is useless. If it's RGB without 
an alpha channel, then sky could be an option.

There has to be a way to simplify the workflow, and make more 
straightforward to choose RGB or RGBA outputs, use composite nodes or 
not. That's the key of the problem: The only case when the sky option is 
useful is when the output won't have an alpha channel, so that option 
should be visible only when the output is RGB.
Currently we have a default with RGB and Sky, and if you want to export 
a proper RGBA file you have to change two options, not one (and if you 
forget one of them and throw a long render you're screwed).
And if you want to use the compositor you have to activate yet another 
option!
It's three steps for something that should probably the default behavior.

I haven't thought about this thoroughly, but what about just removing 
the alpha options from the shading panels and leave only the RGB and 
RGBA options there, showed in a more prominent way?
If the user chooses RGB, it will use the sky background. If the user 
chooses RGBA, it will use the alpha "mode" set in the color preferences 
(premultiplied/straight)* and the "use composite nodes" option will be 
used (and probably the switch could go away too).
I mean, why do we have to activate that option? What's the problem of 
having it always active when RGBA output is used?

*) Maybe the alpha association should be set in the color management 
panel or even in the user preferences. Having it near the file output in 
the render panel can be misleading and lead users to think that it's an 
option that governs the alpha association of the output file.
It should be perfectly clear that the option defines the default 
behavior for the alpha association in rendering, which is something that 
can be changed during compositing.