V-Ray | How to USE BACKPLATES | Part 1: Preparation, Lighting + GI, Tonemapping

[@JonasNoell]

Part 2 already on Patreon: www.patreon.com/JonasNoell

[@mikegentile13]

What I love about your overall process in all of your videos is that you start simple, get everything figured out with instant feedback, then swap in the more complex model. It's very efficient and effective.

[@JonasNoell]

Thx for the feedback!.It is normally easiest to test out everything on very simple objects and shaders to see that everything is working and then switch to more complex geometry and shaders. If you throw too many complicated things into the game then it's often times hard to understand what does what 🙂

[@nicolabarbano9464]

Waiting the Part 2! ;) Awesome tutorial as always!

[@JonasNoell]

Part 2 is on Patreon :-)

[@nicolabarbano9464]

@@JonasNoell Oh!I didn't know...Thank you! ;)

[@pixelquarry]

Can't wait for part 2! Learned some new tricks from this one. Thanks!

[@bgtubber]

Thanks, Jonas for another outstanding tutorial! Very educational! 👏Thank you.

[@zekapirozeka]

I can't believe that such a video got only 3 likes! This is very cool, came across your channel a week ago and already using some of the tricks you talk about, very interesting to learn such secrets and most importantly that the presentation is very simple. Good luck to you!

[@JonasNoell]

Thanks for the feedback, actually the video is only visible to Patreons for now, so that's why the likes are much less :-)

[@Alirahnema_vfx]

Your training was very good. Thank you for visiting my channel👍👍👍👍👍👍

[@ramdpshah]

Really nice tutorial. thank you for the tutorial and waiting for the next part eagerly

[@JonasNoell]

Part 2 on Patreon already :-)

[@jimmwagner]

Your tutorials are so great!

[@jimmwagner]

Is there a process for setting up the render elements and post effects so you render out an image sequence and then load everything into after effects or davinci and have it all comped together?

[@3dhype633]

for exterior scene lighting, I use the findandbind script, to bind the sun to the hdri-sun-spot with 1 click, that saves alot of time :) I always learn something from your videos, even with "more basic videos", because your workflow is always up2date & smart! appreciate it!

[@3dhype633]

just one question to add: have you ever considered using the slide editor, instead of the compact? I think for tutorial purpose it gives a better overview. Because you're working with V-Ray for a long time, your personal pref is the compact editor, I get that, but people that are watching tutorials are mostly new to the tool and use the slide editor, the note base look gives a better understanding, specially when the shader tree gets more complex.

[@JonasNoell]

Hi, thx for the feedback. Yeah I was pointed to that script before, haven't tried it out but I sure will! Thx for mentioning!

[@JonasNoell]

I am using the Slate ME in my tutorials whenever i feel it makes sense. Just changing the glossiness value of a shader for me doesn't justify having 2/3 of my screen covered with the material editor when I feel other things are more important for understanding. Most videos where it goes deeper into shading and more complicated networks I use Slate ME. The thing is when I use Slate I can basically only show the renderview and everthing else is covered, while with the Compact ME I can also show 2 viewports, the Graph Editor, Modifier stack and so on...

[@3dhype633]

@@JonasNoell now that you mention it, right... in other tutorials you use the slide editor, sorry, I totally forgot. I think because I keep seeing different tutorials on KZbin that only use the Compact Editor. Then I take back my comment & leave it at my compliment :D Super video

[@mikegentile13]

Awesome! Thank you!

[@JonasNoell]

Part 2 will be released in the coming days

[@qendrimgjata1525]

you need to stop being so f-**cking awsome with these videos

[@patflynn221]

Hi Jonas, Great tutorial could you please explain in brief the process for getting reflection refraction etc I can't find the second part to this tutorial anywhere. Or could you please direct me to that. thanks.

[@JonasNoell]

Hi, Part 2 only on Patreon for now. The link to Patreon would be www.patreon.com/JonasNoell

[@patflynn221]

thanks for getting back to me@@JonasNoell

[@berth.3d]

very helpful. Can you also share same tutorial for glass :)

[@JonasNoell]

I have one that touches this topic, you can search for a tutorial about Diamond Shading in my channel.

[@berth.3d]

@@JonasNoell Thanks :)

[@Jason1989A]

Hey Jonas, I noticed you are using a very bright exposure setting 9,0EV, is this for a particular reason? I would have thought for an outdoor scene it would have been easier to set to something like 13EV. Also if possible would you be able to do a photomontage tutorial, where you place a building into a backplate? or is it more or less the same process as this, I noticed there isn't many quality tutorials out there which cover this subject. Many thanks as always! also you now have my membership on Patreon 😉

[@JonasNoell]

Hi, in this case I do that as with EV 9 once you load the background plates it shows up correctly without additional tweaking. In fact often times when working with combining plates + cg I prefer to leave everything locked at EV 9 and adjust the brightness in the lights instead of messing with the plates themselves.

[@mwsiviero]

Very nice! Congrats for the tut! Does anybody know if there is "Tonemapping" or anything similar in Blender?

[@JonasNoell]

I’m not really a blender user but there is this “filmic” mode that does that but you don’t really seem to have much control about the details and can just choose between a few presets.

[@antoniovoto]

thanks! i imagine that you use camera map for the reflections?

[@JonasNoell]

In this case I used the HDRI. Using the backplate can also work but your backplate is normally not an hdri, so reflection brightness might not look correctly. The hdri is better in that regard but has problems that there are distortions or the hdri doesn't match exactly your backplate. No ideal way overall, just need to decide which tradeoffs you can live with in which kind of scenario.

[@antoniovoto]

@@JonasNoell thanks...!! i wait the second part.

[@addamski]

Excellent, looking forward to part two. Do you use Fusion at all, I was wondering in that workflow would you leave the "localized tonemapping" till you're in there. If you do use Fusion or some other, a tutorial of that would be fantastic!

[@JonasNoell]

Hi, sure normally this part would be done in Fusion, Nuke and so on. But I find it remarkable that all of this can be also achieved directly in the VFB itself and if I can see the near to final result directly in the VFB it helps me personally to speed up my overall workflow. I normally don't do any postprocessing myself.

[@addamski]

@@JonasNoell Yeah thought as much. I agree, Vray is becoming much more a one stop shop for everything now. I was asking mainly for amination (Arch-Viz) i'm trying to learn Fusion (slowly) more theory of the workflows in my head though at the moment :)

[@abdullahubeyd3060]

thanks

[@roymor6200]

Hi Jonas Thanks for the great tutorial Question about the background: How do you make the background image not be affected by the camera exposure? When I place a physical camera with say 14 env, the background image comes out dark. Thanks

[@JonasNoell]

If you put the EV value of the camera to 9 it will stay unaffected. That's why I have to adjust the intensity of the sun much lower instead of adjusting the cameras EV.

[@roymor6200]

@@JonasNoell Thanks

[@tobiasnoll5359]

Why don‘t you use the HDRI environment map for the lighting? Performance?

[@JonasNoell]

No, flexibility. For exterior scenes the lighting is normally not very complex, just one direct light and skydome. Using procedural lights offers much more possibilites to tweak shadow softness, skylight color, shadow color and so on. Also to use the HDRI for lighting it has to be captured correctly, and some HDRIs ar not. So for exterior scene I tend to not use the HDRI for lighting. For interior scenes the lighting can become much more complex so there it is another story and I normally use the HDRI itself.

[@ExacoMvm]

You likely already know, but u don't have to play around with the sun like that. Simply setup a very wide FoV, in the V-Ray VFB turn down the exposure so you can see the main light source of the HDRI ( Sun ), then while VraySun being visible, drag the sun very very far away in the scene and match the HDRI's Sun ( at this point you can narrow the FoV for more accuracy ), then it will simply align with the HDRI's Sun and you can work from there. I think doing this way you can also match the size of the sun based on your HDRI sun size. Because it makes no sense if your VraySun is lets say NW and your HDRI sun is East when you do based on backplate since some quality HDRI's will have strong directional shadows, the HDRI has to match backplate as much as possible in first place and as long as the VraySun matches the HDRI's Sun it should be fine, maybe some tweaks will be needed to match the softness, intensity and color on a backplate.

[@JonasNoell]

Hi, thanks what you say is all correct and a totally plausible workflow. In this example though the sun is not visible in the backplate and I just wanted to demonstrate how you can match the sunposition to the backplate. Sometimes backplate and HDRI is not shot at the same time or the HDRI is not captured well enough so that sunposition, color and softness don't match your backplate. Anyway many ways to achieve the same result, so just use whatever works best for you in your project with the resources you have :-)

[@dasnico13]

Jonas, you are the best! Why not use aces? Also they always told me not to change the value of the sun because its accurate. but i guess who cares in cg :D as long as it looks good

[@JonasNoell]

Aces would add another level of complexity to each tutorial which I think will be confusing, that's why I stick to sRGB. Also I don't use Aces in my daily workflow as in its current implementation it has too many downsides and too few upsides for me personally.

[@JonasNoell]

You can either change the value of the sun or the EV value of the camera. The camera EV is normally preferred but in this case doing so would decrease the brightness of the backplate which I want to keep unchanged. So changing the suns intensity is the only remaining option. In CG everything is allowed as long as you know what you are doing and why you are doing it :-)

[@dasnico13]

@@JonasNoell thanks bro