[Bf-committers] Render Layer Proposal

[Ton Roosendaal]

Hi,

> You actually told me the reason why we have openEXR & MultiLayer (exr) is
> because some third party software do not support Multilayer properly. 

I wouldn't have said that. At the time there was no other program using openEXR multilayer at all. I asked ILM to propose a standard for it, but they were not interested.

> So my proposal was for Blender to render 1 "image sequence" by passes out
> of the box without going through the trouble of compositor, and this only
> in case the user didn't choose a multiLayer format.

You're making it sound so complicated... here's my version:

A new OpenEXR render output option, that saves the layers and passes per frame as individual files, according to naming specifications that are used for MultiLayer already. For frame 1 it would look like this for example:

./0001.RenderLayer.combined.exr
./0001.RenderLayer.Z.exr
./0001.Characters.AO.exr
./0001.Characters.Diffuse.exr

Where the .exr files store channels as specified by the exr spec. Sometimes 1 channel, or 3, or 4.

The dots can become underscores too; dunno if programs get confused with it. Having custom naming for passes or channels is something cycles work can look into.

-Ton-

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ton Roosendaal  Blender Foundation   ton at blender.org    www.blender.org
Blender Institute   Entrepotdok 57A  1018AD Amsterdam   The Netherlands

On 17 Jan, 2012, at 21:16, François T. wrote:

> Ton :
> My bad for calling it better or whatever, I'm sorry that's all you
> understood and remember from my mail, in which I tried to explain each
> point of the current process and how I "wish" it to be !
> 
> But maybe the best way to understand it is if you try to render each pass
> into different image sequence (whatever format : png, jpg,tga, tiff, ...)
> and see how long the process is and how it would slow down the render time.
> If you do so, you'll see that the only way to do it is manually by hand via
> the compositor.
> 
> You actually told me the reason why we have openEXR & MultiLayer (exr) is
> because some third party software do not support Multilayer properly. That
> doesn't mean the user wouldn't like to have all his passes seperated.
> 
> So my proposal was for Blender to render 1 "image sequence" by passes out
> of the box without going through the trouble of compositor, and this only
> in case the user didn't choose a multiLayer format.
> Basically assuming that if he didn't setup the compositor, selected a few
> passes to render and select a format as PNG for example, then it means he
> wants 1 sequences by passes in a PNG format saved on his harddrive (that
> why I suggested a path naming convention as well). And same goes for
> multiple RenderLayers.
> 
> I honestly don't know how to explain it more clearly I'm sorry :'(
> 
> 
> F.
> 
> 
> 2012/1/17 gespertino at gmail.com <gespertino at gmail.com>
> 
>> Ton:
>> I think he's talking about how tedious is to output individual passes
>> as image sequences using file-output nodes.
>> 
>> For instance, storing 5 passes to tga sequences requires you to add 5
>> file-output nodes, set them up with the right path, and it still
>> requires the presence of a composite node in order to save animation.
>> That could be simplified and the composite node shoudn't be required
>> if file-output nodes are used.
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> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> ____________________
> François Tarlier
> www.francois-tarlier.com
> www.linkedin.com/in/francoistarlier
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