Images Tab

This page provides information about the Images tab of the V-Ray Renderer node.

Overview

Images tab of the V-Ray Renderer node presents settings for the rendered image output.

Parameters

Show Frame Buffer – Opens up the V-Ray Frame Buffer (VFB).

Reset VFB Position – Resets the position of the VFB.

Use VFB Background Image – When enabled, overrides the image loaded in the VFB Background layer. Тhis is useful when you want to use an image sequence for the VFB background. It overrides the VFB background layer with the specified image sequence. E.g. "myFile.$F4.jpg" results in a different image file for every frame.

VFB Background Image – Loads a background image or image sequences when the Use VFB Background Image option is enabled.

Previous Render – Determines what should be done with the previous image in the VFB when rendering starts. Note that this parameter has no effect on the final result of the rendering; it is implemented simply as a convenient way to distinguish between parts of the current frame being rendered and parts left over from the previous rendering. The possible values are:

Don't Clear – No changes are made - the VFB remains the same.
Cross – Every second pixel of the image is set to black.
Fields – Every other line of the image is set to black.
Darken – The colors in the image are darkened.
Tint Blue – The previous image is tinted in blue.
Clear To Black – Removes the previous frame for the VFB.

Note that it is recommended to turn of the Light Cache's Show Calc. Phase option.

Save Image – When enabled, an image is saved at the specified File Path location.

File Path – Specifies the location where the image is saved. Supports the following extensions .png, .jpg, .tiff, .tga, .sgi, .exr, and .vrimg. A file without one of these extensions is given an .exr extension by default.

Resumable Rendering – If there is a resumable file existing for the current frame, the rendering is resumed from it. Otherwise, a new render is started, and resumable files are saved. If the rendering is already complete, the frame is skipped and the next one (if any) is started. Use the -deleteResumableFileOnSuccess flag when rendering with V-Ray Standalone to delete the .vrprog once the render is complete.

Autosave Interval (min) – Specifies an interval in minutes at which to save the resumable file for progressive rendering. If set to 0, the file will only be saved at the end.

Delete Resumable File on Success – When enabled, the resumable file is deleted automatically if the frame is completed successfully. This applies for additional .vrimg or .vrprog files, it doesn't apply when the output image file is .vrimg.

Render Elements

Use Render Elements – A toggle for quick enabling and disabling of the render elements.

Templates – Specifies the render channel template from Back to Beauty, Back to Beauty Adv, and All Elements.

Generate – Generates render channels from a template.

Network – Specifies the V-Ray Render Elements ROP to use with the current Renderer. Multiple V-Ray Renderer nodes can link to the same Render Elements node.

Store Beauty Pass Under a Separate Folder – When enabled, it stores the Beauty pass in a separate RGBA folder.

${AOV} or only $AOV can be used to mark where RE.name will be placed in the filename. It can be used as a folder name too.

If there is no ${AOV}/$AOV tag specified and the render element supports any multichannel format, it is written in a multichannel format (.exr for example).

Starting with V-Ray 6 for Houdini as well as in the latest V-Ray 5 stable nightly builds, the Back to Beauty Adv preset includes all the needed Render channels - the DirectLight, GI, Reflection, and Refraction channels have been added recently too. Find more information about the channels included in the Back to Beauty Adv preset here: List of Supported Render Elements.

In order to render a correct Raw render pass, you need to also render the corresponding main element and filter. For example, Raw Reflection requires you to render Reflection and Reflection Filter. For Raw GI, you need GI and Diffuse, etc.

Advanced

Memory Frame Buffer – Tells V-Ray how to utilize the VFB when rendering to .vrimg or .exr.

None – Doesn't display the image to minimize memory usage.
Full – No memory optimization.
Preview – Displays a lower resolution of the image to minimize memory usage.

Write Deep Data – When enabled, writes deep output into the rendered image.

Deep multipart EXR files are not supported.

Save Color Corrections to Raw Files – When enabled, the Color Corrections are saved into raw files. This options is available only for .exr and .vrimg files.

Save Cryptomatte Separately – Saves the Cryptomatte channels as a separate EXR file. The option is available for both V-Ray CPU and V-Ray GPU rendering.

Save Deep Data to Separate Files – When enabled, deep data is saved to separate files.

File – Deep render file path. A file without one of these extensions is given .exr extension by default.
Compression – Compression type for the .exr files.
Bits per channel – Stores 32 bit (single precision) color channels in the shade map. When disabled, 16 bit (half precision) values are stored.

Don't Save RGB Channel – When enabled, the RGB channels is not saved (ignored with multichannel exr and vrimg).

Don't Write Alpha Channel – When enabled, the Alpha channels are not saved (ignored with multichannel exr and vrimg).

Separate Alpha Channel File – When enabled, the alpha channel of the rendered image is saved to a separate file.

Save Velocity 0-Base – When enabled, it saves the velocity channel with zero base instead of the default 0.5 based.

Frame Stamp – Turns the frame stamp on and off.

Stamp Text – The keywords used to render the stamp tokens or keyboards (see table below). These keywords are replaced by V-Ray with the corresponding value:

Keyword	Information rendered
%vrayversion	Current version of V-Ray
%filename	Name of the current scene file
%frame	Number of the current frame
%primitives *	Number of unique intersectable primitives generated for the current frame*
%rendertime	Render time for the current frame
%computername	Network name of the computer
%date	Current system date
%time	Current system time
%w	Width of the image in pixels
%h	Height of the image in pixels
%camera	Name of the camera for this frame if rendering from a camera (if not rendering from a camera, an empty string)
%ram	Amount of physical memory (in KBytes) installed on the system
%vmem	Amount of virtual memory (in KBytes) available on the system
%mhz	Clock speed of the system CPU(s)
%os	Operating system

Image Format

Contains parameters relevant to the currently selected output image format.

Compression – Allows you to choose compression level for the resulting file. Lower values mean less compression and larger file size. Higher values mean better compression and smaller file sizes. Note that PNG files use a lossless compression, so the resulting image quality is not affected.

Bits Per Channel – The number of bits for each of the PNG channels (red, green, blue, alpha).

Quality – Allows you to choose the desired JPEG output quality. Lower values represent smaller file size and worse quality; higher values represent larger file size and better image quality.

Bits per Channel – Specifies the desired number of bits per channel (8, 16 or 32) in the resulting image.

Interleaved Color Channels – When enabled, the color information for each pixel is saved using the Interleaved order which means that the full color for each pixel is saved before moving to the next one. Some image processing applications require that the image is saved in this mode.

Compression – Specifies compression options for the resulting image.

Bits per Channel – Specifies the desired number of bits per channel (8 or 16) in the resulting image.

Compression – Allows you to choose the compression type for the output file:

Default
No compression – Disables all compression.
Run-length – Basic form of compression that is comparable to the one used by Targa/BMP files.
Scanline ZIP – Zip style compression applied to individual scanlines.
Block ZIP – Zip style compression applied to blocks of 16 scanlines at time. More effective then Scanline Zip, but can be slower to decompress.
PIZ – Uses a new combined wavelet / Huffman compression. This form of compression is quite effective when dealing with grainy images, and often surpasses any of the other options under grainy conditions.
PXR24 – Converts data to 24 bit then uses Zip compression. It is lossless for half and 32bit integer data and slightly lossy for 32bit float data.
B44 – This form of compression is lossy for half data and stores 32bit data uncompressed.
B44A – An extension to B44 where areas of flat color are further compressed. Regular B44 compresses uniformly regardless of image content.
DWAA – JPEG-like lossy compression format. Compresses 32 scanlines together.
DWAB – Same as DWAA, but compresses blocks of 256 scanlines to achieve better compression ratio.

Bits per Channel – Allows you to choose between 16-bit (half float) and 32-bit (full float) precision.

Data Window – Determines what data window information is written to OpenEXR files. This option works only when the Memory frame buffer option of V-Ray is set to Full.

Render Region – Sets the data window to the render region.
Auto – The data window is determined from the pixels that have non-zero alpha values.
Whole Image – Sets the data window to the image resolution.

Write Integer IDs (non multi-channel files only) – When enabled allows you to write ID information in integer form rather than RGB colors.

Write Multi-part EXR (multi-channel files only) – When enabled, multichannel EXRs are written to a single multi-part file. This feature requires OpenEXR 2 support.

Deel Alpha Colors – A data window for scanline-based multichannel OpenEXR files. The available options are Monochrome, RGB, and Monochrome + RGB.

Extra Attributes – Allows you to specify additional attributes for the OpenEXR file. These are of the format attr1=val1;attr2=val2;... where the values can be either integer or floating-point numbers, or lists of numbers in brackets representing vectors, matrices, etc. For example:

int_attr=53;float_attr=3.14;vec4_attr=(1, 2, 3, 4)

If a value cannot be recognized as a number or a sequence of numbers, it is assumed to be a string value.