10-bit (or more) color with Studio

Tonight, I was thinking about some what if's.   During that session, I found out that NVidia cards support 10-bit color and in a document from Nvidia, I found IRay supports 10-bit color, but not to what extent.

So, my question is:  Has anyone tried 10-bit color renders with Studio and is it even possible?  

Scott

Comments

  • JonnyRayJonnyRay Posts: 1,744

    If you use canvases, the output files are EXR format, which is an High Dynamic Range (HDR) format using 16-bit floating point values for color and exposure. Basically even if you just use a Beauty canvas, the output there has more color and intensity data than the standard PNG output from the rendering process. You may need a 3rd party tool to read and process them though. I use GIMP for post processing, but even then I needed to get some extensions to support EXR files.

  • wsgentrywsgentry Posts: 572
    JonnyRay said:

    If you use canvases, the output files are EXR format, which is an High Dynamic Range (HDR) format using 16-bit floating point values for color and exposure. Basically even if you just use a Beauty canvas, the output there has more color and intensity data than the standard PNG output from the rendering process. You may need a 3rd party tool to read and process them though. I use GIMP for post processing, but even then I needed to get some extensions to support EXR files.

    Thanks answering.   I'm gathering you save your renders to bmp or a lossless format then use a third-party application to convert the render to EXR format?  Also, I'm going to guess that direct rendering is not really possible in Daz, now or in the future.   Granted it's a stretch because most folks don't have monitors supporting ten or more bit color unless they have a 4k HDR10 or Dolby supported TV.  It's more of a what if question, I guess.

    I will try as you say and see what the results are.

  • Dave63Dave63 Posts: 49

    Look under your render settings tab->advanced settings you will see a check box for "canvases" . If you render using Canvases, all canvas layers are rendered in 16bit fp exr, even if you just do a beauty pass and do not composite( which can also be done from within Daz Studio).

  • wsgentrywsgentry Posts: 572
    Dave63 said:

    Look under your render settings tab->advanced settings you will see a check box for "canvases" . If you render using Canvases, all canvas layers are rendered in 16bit fp exr, even if you just do a beauty pass and do not composite( which can also be done from within Daz Studio).

    Thank you for that!

    Scottt

  • wsgentrywsgentry Posts: 572

    Did the first canvas render overnight. I got a Photoshop plugin (I have Gimp, too), watched the SickleYield video, so we'll see how it goes.  It's a full 4k render so I'm interested in seeing color depth, but didn't have time this morning.

    Thank you guys, again.

  • wsgentrywsgentry Posts: 572

    Interesting stuff.  After looking at every video on YouTube for canvases,having Gimp crash when loading the second EXR file, using Photoshop and the Exr-IO plugin and trying just about everything (32-bit to 8-bit, Adjustment layers--exposure, etc.,) I'm frustrated as all get out, but plugging away.   DAZ works fine producing the EXR files.  So, I'll ask for hints elsewhere.  Thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

    Scott

  • @wsgentry - do you mind sharing what you discovered for viewing the EXR files. I found out that with the Gimp plugin, it will convert the files to Targa, followed by making them 8 bit. I have tried Adobe AE, followed by applying an exposure filter, then entering "-12" which gives me a file that resembles the accompanying tif files, but once again, when I render to tif, then I no longer have an HDR file.

    Please help, this is driving me nuts with all these dead ends

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