Matte Painter Friendly Render Passes for external workflow
I switched from Max (vray) to Blender recently. The only thing missing so far to complete my previous workflow are couple render passes like Gi, selective light passes(seperate), atmosphere(fog on its own pass), reflection and refraction pass and easy RGB matte passes for isolating Objects and materials(not cryptomatte).
Here an example of what the passes should look like: imgur.com/a/toPYcEL
I would like to be able to extract those passes without having to render multiple times with different lights on or having to combine specific ones in the compositor in Blender. just simple on and off toggle like in Vray.
Then and only then will most Concept artists and Matte painters even be able to consider Blender(cycles) as a viable option.
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so we are looking at an enormous time loss in productivity for something every other render has as default as on/off toggle
I am having the same issue. I have co-workers who want to switch to Blender but this part of the workflow has been a big hurdle for them to get behind. I think the main problem is that the way render passes are setup right now is assuming that the user is going to do all their compositing in the Blender compositor. So features like cryptomatte are great for that. But a lot of people who work in professional pipelines need to use programs like Photoshop or After Effects to composite their renders and that is where exporting the passes gets complicated. You are able to export passes using the file output node in the compositor right now but if you have 10 different passes to use that process of connecting all of the different passes into that node is very time consuming. There is also no way to export a “clown pass” or multi colored imaged to select mattes for different objects. Cryptomatte almost creates it but the image is not anti-aliased for export. The best thing would be to create a quick way to set up and export all these passes at once.
So again just to iterate, it is not whether it is possible or not, except maybe for the atmosphere pass (haven't figured out how to do that one in Blender yet). It's about the time spent setting things up for simple things.
In this example i take 1 sphere, 1 plane + 1 dome light and 1 area light in both Vray and cyles, vray takes 30 sec to set up for this simple scene, where as blender requires not only multiple renders, but also requires to combine passes as shown to get to the same result
imgur.com/a/buvKDuO
Now imagine having more light(sun+ GI+ artificial lights+ fire+ whaterver) and also having to need reflection , refraction , zdepth, matte passes and atmosphere.
The more lights we need to be seperate in Cycles means the more seperate renders we need to do. Where as in Vray 1 toggle just does it for you and you have all the passes in a drop down.
for example setting up all those passes in took me about 2 mins in vray imgur.com/a/jNF4ZGo
Where as in Blender Atmo pass doesn't exist as a toggle, Lights + Gi are not separable without multiple renders and painful set up
Reflection and refraction need to be combined in the compositor something somewhat useful in 2d painting (combining color Glossy direct, indirect + color) same for reflection.
practically all what you want - already there
p.s. this is kind of silly - ask something like "i want in cycles all passes what are in vray" if developer did not do this from 2006 (first open movies) - then may be(?) all passes what need for compositing there are. And this mean - you must learng how passes work in blender bit not ask - "want like in Vray" i also want features from vray in cycles - but those features NOT exist in cycles (example - light linking per objects) - but passes exist in cycles - learn how to use it....
In the latest blender version exist seperate passes for volumes Direct and Indirect. If you add those two together you should have your athmosphere pass.
Object ID and Material ID passes have existed for a long time but are still in a bad shape and are functionally completley superseeded by cryptomatte. What is wrong with cryptomatte? I assume compatibility issues with the painting program?
Light ID passes would be amazing but not something I foresee in the near future. Allthough I would like to be proven wrong on that point.
In the meantime you could try out vray for blender (I believe it requires a vray standalone license).
If I am understanding this correctly, you want something to automate doing this process?
Output File Setup
* @daniellapalme * No, i would need it to output light passes separately and have diff(dir) ,gloss also called reflection((dir+ind) col)), transition also called refraction((dir+ind) col)) as an option for the passes just like all other renderers do.
check octane and vray(simple check box)