akzonobel lifestyle

• Create a material with color checker texture

• Place the color checker relevant to the product

• Adjust the VFB view settings:

  • Sampled area size is pixels: 7x7

  • Show corrected colors: RGB

  • Specifies RGB values: 8bit

• Adjust the camera settings until you get white values of the checker around 240

• Adjust the white balance from camera by selecting the before last gray color

• Re-Adjust the camera settings until you get white values of the checker around 240

• Save the image for further fine color calibration (preferable OpenEXR format but everything above or equal to 16 bits should work)

• Rename the pass name depending on scene (add _RGB at the end)

• Disable Save File

• Enable Auto Raw Path

• Setup the Output Preferences

• Setup the Render Elements for the RGB pass

• Create a new pass for the MASK (and rename it)

• Setup the Render Elements for the MASK pass

• Edit and run the script to set the correct affect channels values for the RGB pass

  • m.refraction_affectAlpha = 0 (0 means color only)

  • m.reflection_affectAlpha = 0 (0 means color only)

• Submit the RGB pass

• Edit and run the script to set the correct affect channels values for the MASK pass

  • m.refraction_affectAlpha = 2 (2 means all channels)

  • m.reflection_affectAlpha = 2 (2 means all channels)

• Submit the MASK pass

• Edit and run the script before you save the scene so affect channes are back to color only

  • m.refraction_affectAlpha = 0 (0 means color only)

  • m.reflection_affectAlpha = 0 (0 means color only)

• Save the scene

Why we need to render the scene in back to beauty?

First what is Back to Beauty:

The "Back to Beauty" concept involves separating the rendering process into multiple passes or layers, each capturing specific information such as diffuse color, reflections, shadows, and more. After these passes are rendered, they can be individually adjusted or enhanced. The "Back to Beauty" step then involves combining these passes back together to recreate the final, visually appealing image known as the beauty pass.

This workflow allows artists greater control over the individual elements of the scene during post-processing. It enables them to fine-tune the lighting, reflections, and other visual aspects separately before merging them back into the final image. This level of control is especially valuable for achieving a desired look or making adjustments without the need to re-render the entire scene.

Why we use it:

In our project with AkzoNobel, numerous alterations are made to the product color, walls, ceilings, radiators, kitchen elements, and props. Rendering each color combination individually consumes a significant amount of time. However, thanks to the implementation of the "back to beauty" compositing technique, we now only need to render a single image. This enables us to efficiently modify the product color in fusion, dramatically reducing the image generation time from several hours to mere minutes. 

Why we have two render passes RGB and MASK?

To get the correct reflections and refractions in "back to beauty" compositing is a bit tricky and V-Ray doesn't make it easy for us. In the RGB render pass we have MME masks as well but they don't affect the channels and if we use them we will not have the correct mask for the reflections and refractions. If we decide to set the RGB render pass to all channels, then the MME mask will be baked in all channels and we will have a transparent image. 

The easiest solution is to render one EXR with affect channels set to "color only" and the second one with affect channels set to "all channels". With this setup we can build our "back to beauty" compositing with the RGB render elements and add the MASK render elements only for the reflection and refractions.

• Open new Blackmagic Design Fusion

• Navigate to Scripts -> AkzoNobel -> BackToBeauty

• Select EXR RGB render

• Select EXR MASK render

• Fill in the number of color changes

• Click on OK

The script will create you a VRay Back To Beauty composition, splitting all necessary channels from the EXR. It will generate also a Loaders for any number of color changes you need also it will set the correct comments for automation this with Fusioniser.

The objects that need to change color MUST be specify by MultiMatteElement set to material. All changeables MUST be at RED channel, for example if you have 3 object that change color you need to add MME_123_, MME_456, MME_789_ and the object materials MUST be set to ID's 1, 4 and 7.

In the "AKZONOBEL_VRAY_BACK_TO_BEAUTY_RGB.rel" and "AKZONOBEL_MASK.rel" template files, which are render elements settings files, we have added MME for 5 color changeables which is enough for most of the AkzoNobel projects.