Spherical render bug.
Malus
Posts: 370
I've searched for it couldn't find anything to do with this so I will post it. I'm having this bug with carrara where when I render a spherical map and save it, it saves as completely black nothing there but a black square when saved but it renders just fine. It is kind of annoying consider the only way to save the image is with a capture tool and I can't always get it exactly the right size so it won't render an hdr image properly it usually has a white line down the middle because I captured a small snippet of something else. The black image seems to be something else because on here it shows up as a purple square
sky_222.PNG
1128 x 684 - 57K
Sky_ii.png
1100 x 800 - 45K
Post edited by Malus on
Comments
If you're rendering a realistic sky, it looks as if the "ground" option is enabled. Make sure your camera is above it, or disable the Ground checkbox.
That's the transparency showing. If you've already rendered with the alpha channel save as a bmp or other collapsed format to show the rendered image.
I have been setting the tile size in the render room, toward the bottom of the left-most tab's parameters, to 16 so that each core has smaller bits to crunch through for such a large image (8000 x 4000 is a norm, but it is often even too small at that size if you need to use the floor in a shadow catcher render using that spherical background.
Nonetheless, no matter the size of the resolution, as EP said, your camera height is important.
Phil Wilkes goes through the whole spherical background rendering and HDRI creation in Infinite Skills: "Advanced Carrara Techniques" in really good detail, with working files included and the final product made during the tutorials. Very cool learning tool for many more of Carrara's powerful tools, too.
I think RoguePilot is on to something with the alpha issue. The OP probably has it checked in the render room. Although he will still have to be careful with the height of the camera if he's leaving the ground enabled.
Right... darn... I forgot that I was going to say something on that point. I tried using alpha in a BG amp before, if I'm remembering right, and I believe that it did not work as I had expected, which was to leave the Realistic sky come through a background - but I believe that it worked more like multiplying the sky color and illumination with black. Something strange. I'll have to mess around with that some more.
It is incredible at how powerful these features can be to animations - as I'm in the middle of fine tuning as we speak. Utilizing spherical maps to then create animated backdrops (not spherical, set to the final render resolution and production framing), and then compositing over and over between Carrara and Dogwaffle Pro: Howler. The power of this combination is blowing my mind right now. It's just incredibly unlimited.
I think background is behind everything else, including backdrop and realistic sky. So if background is transparent, then there's nothing else to show.
@Dart:
It's possible you enabled the pre-multiplied alpha option. I've had mixed results, so I tend to render straight alpha first, and if it doesn't give me what I want, then I'll use pre-multiplied.
Do you mean if the Alpha Channel option is enabled in the render room?
Jesus y'all are really on the ball also it was the alpha thanks. I noticed it must have been something to do with alpha when I put it up here and it changed colors. Then saving it as a bmp confirmed it and y'all helped to narrow it down thanks a lot, it is always something simple and obvious.
Again Thank You.
Hope y'all have a great day.
Grim,
Glad you got it sorted out, man! I did have a great day. Lots of stone work... Man I love this time of the season. All the hard work nearly cripples me by this time of day, but in the end, if feels good to burn those muscles! LOL
I love making art on peoples yards with beautiful stone work. What a blast it is.
(using realistic sky - playing with the atmospheric controls. I'm not too happy with the lens flare, but...)
The realistic sky is the background.
Anytime you render with alpha channel that whole section of the scene tab is treated the same.
It's a very useful feature for compositing and you only need to render once but save twice to get the different file versions.