Oscar J wrote:Please forgive all my questions: What application do you use to do your tone mapping in 32 bit mode? Photoshop seems very limited in that area. I've trying to get into 32 bit post pro for a while now, but Photoshop does a terrible job with tone mapping (unless I'm missing something). Are you using any special plugins? I've been looking at ArionFX, but unfortunately there's no Mac version yet.
No worries about the questions.
You are producing stellar work there. I have visited your website and was stunned by the really really nice renders you do. So thumbs up!
It might come as a surprise to you, but I light my scenes linear so they look as good as possible without tone mapping. I do all post work in After Effects. Even the post work for still images.
After Effects in my opinion has some advantages in 32bit work flow compared to Photoshop. Also it allows me to just exchange the rendered image (if I change s shader like for example the ice cubes in the previous render) and every effect just gets applied to the render as before. That would not be possible in Photoshop.
But back to tone mapping: The only think I normally do is adjust the exposure and the gamma of the picture. I never had to "Reinhard" a rendering. But this is clearly a work flow thing. I work a lot with product viz that is rather easy to light right. In comparison to interiors etc. that can be quite tricky to light linearly.
So Ißm a bit sorry to disapoint you there. I might be a little bit old school. But I light and render in "Screen Space" so what I see is what I get (in this case in the Untonemapped EXR)
contegufo wrote:I believe that the future is already marked and are maps HDR; no noise, no fireflies. HDR Studio light 5 is an interesting product but then you no longer need an external Renderer ......
As Oscar already stated it really depends on the the dynamic range of the HDR. Also it depends on the layout of the HDR. By layout I mean the size of the areas of brightness.
When dealing with simple path tracing the algorithm has an easier time finding bigger bright spots then really small ones. So even if you have a really bright spot in your HDRI it also makes a difference hot big it is. Small bright spots are much more prone to cause fireflies then bigger bright spots.
Personally I really like working with HDRI´s because they establish a nice lighting situation right away (if you are using the right HDRI´s of course) But I very often also put 1-2 area lights in the scene to intensify the lighting I am looking for.
P.s. HDRI´s also can come in handy with area lights. For example to reproduce slight uniformity over the surface of the light. Of course this might be barely visible. but as Reality shows a big rum or irregularities it can only help to achieve a more realistic image!
Cheers,
Raphael
You don´t dream in cryo.