SandmanNinja

Hi...

I've been doing some tutorials on Mental Ray and have a question.

I've turned on 32-bit floating point on my frame buffer and have saved the renders out as a .HDR file. This lets me take them into Photoshop CS2 and play with the contrast/intensity/etc for some Post Work.

I must say, the ability to take a horribly exposed render and 'save' it by adjusting a slider or two in photoshop is amazing!

Question: Photoshop wouldn't let me Save-As or Export the 32-bit .HDR image as anything 16-bit. I'm just thinking down the road that once the image is adjusted and is just the way you want it, I'd like to save it as a JPG or BMP to be able to put on a website for a client to be able to see.

I realise that I'll be losing the upper 16-bits in doing this, but the image can be the prettiest render in the world but worthless if the client cannot see it.

Also - my programming days are re-visiting me. I know when dealing with 16-bit integers in a programming environment, they were a LOT faster than 32-bit floating point variables. (Well, it doesn't matter about the number of bits - int's are faster in an executable than floating points). Does this translate over to rendering? As is, would the render take longer to do as a 32-bit floating point as compared to a 16-bit integer?

Thanking you...

-Joel

bjornkn

By changing its mode in PS from 32bit to 8 bit (or 16 bit) you'll be presented with different options for conversion, including a sort of tone mapping. There are other programs that probably do this job better than PS though, like PictureNaut (free?) , PhotoMatix, FDRtools, Artizen etc.

Justin Hunt

My understanding is that the render is calculated at 32bit but displayed as either 16bit or 32 bit depending on what you have set for the frame buffer. So there may be minimal render time differences (not that I have noticed) but there are memory consumption differences.

JHV

SandmanNinja

Ah ok.
Yeah, the frame buffer is set to 32-bit floating.

Not sure where to make the change in PhotoShop to save it as a 8/16-bit file format. I've looked and looked.

Thanks for the replies guys...

PS: If there isn't a huge hit/penalty on render times, I think it would be silly NOT to render all my final renders as 32-bit and do some post in PS and save a 8/16-bit version. So many more options...

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Justin Hunt

In photoshop

Image ->Mode -> 16bit

JHV

KristopherLee

The dead has risen... Sandman....

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SandmanNinja

Justin - Thanks for walking me through that.

KristopherLee - Yeah, I guess ArchViz with 3DS is where I allocate a high priority. I've promised myself - no more 'mechs and spaceships until I get my head around this Architecture vertical niche in 3DS.

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