Okay guys. David is working feverishly on finishing his A:M book, and hasn't been able to coax you aspiring compositors along. Will somebody please start some WIP threads. I'd like to see the same kind of energy in this topic as the "Radiosity" topic recently experienced. That means one or two of you need to take the initiative and explore the capabilities of A:M Composite on your own. (Hash guys will chime in when we know more about something composite related than you do.)

Having looked at what is out there related to this it doesn't seem as easy to "experiment" with composite as it has been for other features. This might take some actual knowledge and reading. Might need a little more input to get some more interest. And even the simple project seems to be missing in action on the starting post.

Tinkering Gnome

Perhaps we could coax Greg Rostami to part with his project files that he used during his SIGGRAPH demo?
That project alone would be enough to get the ball rolling.

Rodney

What exactly is AM Compositing?

WooHoo!

Been playing with composite... just a little bit but can't wait to really try it out!

I had tried fiddling before but... was... confused. This may be a Mac only thing, but if anyone is confused when changing the mix values in a composite... don't enter a number and hit return... enter a number and click out of the box or use the tab key... or change numbers by dragging or using arrows.

I found that for some reason... and it may just be me... it would not update the composite view if I just typed a number and hit return. I had to type it again and hit return or else the tab key.

PHEW! What a relief!

I have thoroughly submitted an intensely detailed report... I hope it isn't just me experiencing this... it could be embarrassing...

I thought it worth mentioning since I was losing confidence in my sanity... and that is never a good thing in my book. I have such a weak grasp anyway.

Now my eyes are open! I... see... the light! It is all clear to me now!

p.s. I will NEVER render a still for the image contests the "old" way again. From now on it is EXR BABY and AM COMPOSITE! What a freakin' HUGE dynamic range baby!

Vernon "!" Zehr

No, I'm not really here and didn't really ask a simple question that I really did not want a really simple answer to. REALLY!

Um...and no, I'm not really venting for not really being here and ...

Oh, what's the use

Guess Compositing is an "Insiders" thing.

Relax Eric,
Breathe. Take a walk. Answers will be forthcoming. Some answers already exist here in the forum.

"To the patient come the fruits."

Rodney

A:M V12 allows you to render the illumination from each light (and other visuals like reflections?) in a scene as a separate buffer. Then in A:M Composite you can assemble these buffers and interactively adjust the intesity of each element (make one light brighter for instance) without having to re-render.

That's what i think it is. I haven't used it yet either.

Sorry Eric,

You asked the same question in another thread and there was a link to the v12 manual describing it.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=153018


I used that link to do what I did JUST TONIGHT... having never really used composite successfully before because of the issue I just described.

I falsely assumed you read that other response to the question that is why I didn't bring it up.

Composite is fairly new and kind of complex... that is why I think Martin wants to see what people can do with it.


Vernon "!" Zehr

Thanks for posting your experience here, Vern. I never got the image to update when I was playing with A:M Composite either and so I thought it was beyond my understanding. (I do get dizzy reading David's forum tute on this feature, though.)

It's definitely the least intuitive feature of A:M (to me anyway), but now that I know it wasn't working correctly, maybe I'll give it another shot.

Jim

YOU MUST TRY AGAIN JIM!

I was in the same boat! I thought it was me!

Every "second" change to the value updated. So... If I typed 50% and hit return... the view didn't update. If I typed 25% and return... it went to 25%... etc...

This was why I thought it was "too complicated"... I thought is was... like some weird... thing. The confusing part was typing a number and getting no change... then typing the same number 5 minutes later and getting a different result.

In reality AM Composite is wicked cool, and not rocket science! It still takes experimentation to get a feeling for it... but now it makes so much sense to me.

I use to adjust the levels of final renders in Photoshop... but you lose dynamic range and image quality when you do that. Using AM composite you can see what you will get and never lose anything in the image. You can push the bloody hell out of it and still have the highest quality.

So now I type and "tab" to the next field and it works as normal.

It is amazing how such a teeny tiny small issue can cause confusion...

I felt the need to share this issue because I consider myself pretty intelligent (no giggling)... so... if I had problems...

If this doesn't happen for any other Mac users it would be nice to hear about it... or if it DOES happen to PC users... that would be interesting to hear about as well.

Vernon "!" Zehr

For a moment there, I was stuck in the Compositor and the intensity value of my self esteem and image were almost set to zero, ergo no one could see me I feel better now and hereby express my regret and apologies for my childish outburst (kinda comes with the package, though, and thanks for the tranquilizer Rodney.) Furthermore, many thanks for the intro and references to the ever illusive Compositor. Will do some research and check it out some more.

No probs Eric.

As a "Fellow" I was there when this feature was "born" so to speak... it still has the "new car smell".

Before there are a lot of samples of a new feature... someone has to get in there and fiddle around. We are the explorers! We are Lewis and Clark!

Usually a new feature this cool has people jumping all over it doing stuff... due to it's.. complex nature it is taking longer than usual to get a lot of people excited.

I'm excited now.

All I did was that very simple sample from the manual. I rendered those few frames of the Toys project as an EXR sequence, loaded it up and started randomly typing in different values in the mix thingies and looked closely at what was happening in the preview.

Once I got past that one small problem I... well... I had to change my pants.

At some point I plan to load up my last image contest entry (Dandy DNA) and do a render with all the light buffers so I can really see the power... with an image I am very familiar with.

Just with tweaking the buffers, I could change the emotions of the whole darn thing in an instant!

I am really excited about using some of the post effects on animations. Funny... once you see how it works your mind starts to wander.

I can't afford an upgrade to Adobe After Effects. With AM composite and some practice, I don't think I will need it.

Man! I am so glad I tried it again.

--------

In my mind the biggest "bonus" of this feature is the dynamic range. For years and years I have always struggled with the limited dynamic range of 8 bit images.. banding in shadows... funky colors during adjustments... blown out highlights... etc.

This is going to give me the opportunity to do more and see more in my renders. I sort of understood this was a possibility... but... I actually read that whole description very carefully again in the manual and I think it finally clicked.

Vernon "!" Zehr

Thanks Vern

That method doesn't work for me, but I did find a way to get each tweak to update in the image. I have to turn the effect that I am tweaking off, then on and then off again. Then the image will update. Then I can turn the effect back on and it stays as it should.

Not the fastest way to work, but it works!

Is this refresh problem a video card issue? Or is my system just too old? (Dual 1Gig G4 w 1.5G ram, nVidia GeForce 4 MX, OSX Tiger 10.4.3) Or is it just a Mac/A:M snafu?

Jim

Yesterday after reading Martins post I did do one test and found out quickly that the EXR composite feature is still not working in net render. I find this to be a major stopping point do to the fact that net render is really essential to me. I can not tie up my animation machine to do rendering or wait for a week to get a render done.
Yes sorry to say I had to walk away from EXR composite back in version 12 E do to its issues at the time. I am not on a MAC but am a PC user.
I found it to be frustrating to try and do Davids outstanding tutorial and not having it perform as it was suppose to.
As I said that was back in version 12 E so I am sure the issues are fixed as my reports I made show they are fixed.
I also backed away from it once I saw that reflections were not possible in the EXR composite feature. Reflections has also been added as well.
So it looks like it is time to give EXR composite another test run but until it works in net render I don't really see using the EXR composite feature even though I so very much wish to.

Okay,

Two more options...

1. Try this one... not as quick as the tab key (I just noticed the tab key doesn't work all the time for me either) but might be faster than clicking the thing on and off:

Just "enter" it twice. Type the number hit enter... nothing happens... select again... hit return. This should update the view.

2. Instead of hitting return or tabbing... just click "outside" the box after typing in a value so it closes. This also seems to update the view in most cases for me.

Heads up. This is the same for all number entries including post effects. The view doesn't update the first time you set it. I was fiddling with bloom and blur... and noticed that the changes weren't updating so I am doing this to all of them.

It is a tad annoying... but I am very happy to discover this. I have wanted to try it out for ages and just thought I was an idiot or something.

I feel so much better about myself. My self image has improved considerably. I even think I see some new hair coming in... and someone mentioned that it looked like I had lost some weight.

Vernon "!" Zehr

More info.

The "view update" issue is related to the number of "Mixes" or post effects in the composite!

I just did a test for the first time with 3 light buffers and found that the third "Mix" required updating the values 3 times (I think... it might be 4) to force the view to update.

The second "Mix" requires two value "updates" (might be 3)... so that is the pattern I have found. Each "Mix" further "down" in the hierarchy of the composite requires as many "kicks in the arse" to update the view as it is located under the main composite.

I hope this will help people experimenting with AM Composite who may be getting confused.

Scrolling through an animation only updates the view on successive frames. So if you change values and scroll to frame 2, frame 2 shows the updated view, scroll back to frame one and the "old" view is still there.

I have been updating everything I find in my issue report... so the programming droids at Hash have all the info.



Vernon "!" Zehr

Vern,
Don't forget that you also need to turn around three times and then click your heels together or was is it turn round one time an click your heels three times. I don't remember.

It smells in here... Has someone been farting on our exploration? Not you, Vern - that other guy.

He's Lewis I'm Clark. Clark did all the work. Lewis just complained there weren't enough rest stops with clean bathrooms.

Seriously though Martin,

Is this discussion okay with you? I would hate people to get the wrong impression about this feature. Since I made this discovery it works for me now... yes with some "extra steps" but still... I have made progress.

It is not like it doesn't work... it works just the way it should... it just... has refresh issues.

Vernon "!" Zehr

Hey, I'm with you, Vern. You're exploring the heck out of this thing. Keep it up. Watch for open latrines though - somebody seems to be digging them right near where you're working.

Martin,
Sorry man. Did not mean to offend. I will leave the bad humor to Vern from hear on out.

No worries Jack!

I can understand both sides of the issue. I agree with you... but you catch more flies with honey... and I'm a big softy... most times... unless someone says bad things about aspartame... or Macs...


But since this feature is so freakin' new it needs the wrinkles ironed out and the only way to do that is to play around... warts and all.

This is also a very very obscure issue. The whole update thing would be really hard to track down... or even know it was there at all. Most people (like me, I'm guilty) would just assume it "doesn't work" and never use it.

I swear... every so often since it was out I would give it a shot... and just give up. This time however I kept plugging away at it. I hope it will help for the long term. And I really HATE filling out those "reports". But I'm making the effort lately.

Like I said... it still has that new car smell... at least it's under warrantee.


Vernon "!" Zehr

Sally forth, yeoman explorers. Who has explored yon "Greg Rostami example"? Who hath their own example? We must continue on with our quest!

I played with it. I sure liked it. I am starting to understand the interface, but will probably never understand why the composite comes up with the order that everything gets mixed.

I had two little hiccups. The refresh on the image when changing the mix values seemed to move slower than the ability to scroll the value. The result was the refresh would come along slowly, the value would jump to a few thousand and then kind of lag until you settle on a value or just type it in. This machine is a hoss. It ain't my setup.

The other was I tried dropping in a blur post effect. It worked, but had a hard time refreshing reliably and eventually resulted in an unrecoverable error.

I can submit this to AMreports if you think it's worth it.

WHy is based on the way A:M builds images out of the layers which is explained by Noel here:

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&sh...ndpost&p=147514

Blur is indeed one of the more processor intensive effects you should see it on my older mac

sorry to be so brief, back to writing...

-David

Where exactly is yon "Greg Rostami example"?

While it would be great fun to try to recreate the demo from scratch it would be best to use and abuse the real deal.

If I can find some free time I will try to recreate.
I think I need to spend that time getting TAoAM certificates out though.

Rodney

Greg Rostami's SIGGRAPH composite demo

Thanks Mike!

(and a big thank you to Jim Talbot and Greg Rostami for the project file/demo)

Rodney