Forums Houdini Indie and Apprentice Depth map is only in Black and white

Depth map is only in Black and white

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cigskillu
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I'm trying to render a greyscale depth map ( z-depth) but the .rat shadow map is only generating in two colors, black or white.
The objects are white while the empty space is black. The actual scene is rendering fine, shadows and all. Its just a test scene of spheres.

Am trying to figure out how it works to use for a bigger scene.
Any of your help is welcome,

thanks, -Will

Attachments:
depthmaptest.hipnc (149.5 KB)

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Allegro
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If you press the “i” key when viewing your map in either MPlay or in the compositor, you'll see that you aren't just getting black and white values, you're getting values between 0 (where you see nothing) and however many units your furthest object is from your light.

This means that the brightest values will be an ultra white (greater than 1)
Stephen Tucker
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cigskillu
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theres a little button on the bottom right of MPlay “Adapt to full pixel range” or
“Shift+R” that gave me what i needed. The “ I ” keystroke just zooms in, thanks though.
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Allegro
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“i” shouldn't zoom. It should enable inspect mode
Stephen Tucker
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cigskillu
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your right, i didn't know what that tool was so i called it zooming.
I found a few of your other post about z-depth maps and such and found out how to save that info in an nice small .exr or .pic file format. so i need to ask a few questions.

do you have any experience exporting the “Pz” info to adobe after effects?
Or possibly saving the viewed image in Mplay to another file format like png or bmp? I try to save the Pz channel in mplay but it is a black image, not the the one in the viewport.
-will
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stevenong
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cigskillu
do you have any experience exporting the “Pz” info to adobe after effects?
Or possibly saving the viewed image in Mplay to another file format like png or bmp? I try to save the Pz channel in mplay but it is a black image, not the the one in the viewport.
-will
Hi,

To save to an image format, all you need is to supply the file extension, for example, my_image.png or my_image.bmp.

For saving out the Pz channel from Mplay, you need to change the Scope parameter from “C” to “Pz” in the Save dialog.

For saving out Pz to another image when rendering to disk, turn on the “Different File” toggle in the Mantra ROP when setting up the Pz deep raster and specify the path and filename.

I forgot to mention watermarks will be added to the images if you are using a Houdini Apprentice license. No watermarks are added if you use Apprentice HD or Houdini Master/Escape commercial license.

Cheers!
steven
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Allegro
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I'm not 100% sure what type of maps After Effects wants.

They expect normal rgb images with values between 0-1 that are used as a lumamatte right?

If so, you can open your image in our internal compositor (/img) using a file node

you can use a channel copy to copy Pz to R, G, and B, and use an equalize node to set the values to a range of 0-1
Stephen Tucker
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cigskillu
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.w
Edited by - April 28, 2009 03:58:50
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cigskillu
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Allegro
They expect normal rgb images with values between 0-1 that are used as a lumamatte right?

If so, you can open your image in our internal compositor (/img) using a file node

you can use a channel copy to copy Pz to R, G, and B, and use an equalize node to set the values to a range of 0-1


Iv been trying to figure out how to channel copy the Pz info to R.G.B as you instructed, i just havn't got it yet. Could you show me an example hip file or screen shot of how you would have the nodes set up correctly. I appreciate the time you have spent on my questions, thank you. This is a fun learning experience.

Attachments:
renderball.jpg.jpg (39.7 KB)
zinfo.picnc (1.2 MB)
pz to rgb.hipnc (23.6 KB)

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Allegro
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I would render as demonstrated in the attache .hip file

attached is also a modified version of your .hipnc file which shows how you could do the copy.

Attachments:
pz_to_rgb_108.hipnc (26.7 KB)
z_depth.hip (109.4 KB)

Stephen Tucker
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