I had a right click select idea 1 year ago to make compositor more usable, But noone noticed it, So I want to explain some ideas from there here and updating those ideas with realtime ccompositor:
Having more than 1 Compositor node tree like ‘‘compositor materials’’ as we have in geometry nodes or materials (that we can append or make compositor material assets and more opportunities)
Integrating worlds and cameras with compositor materials = Having a new option '‘Link a Compositor material’ in world properties and also in seperately in camera properties so we can use:
a. Compositor color grading or bloom or any effect onto worlds that only work with that world material
(different worlds can have different styles)
b. If there is slight extra changes for indiivdual cameras like different level of chromatic abbreviation or sharpening, another compositor material can be also assigned to another camera (different cameras can have different type of styles)
2.5 - There can be also a main compositor material marked as main or active compositor material that will be used for cyrptomatte things or denoising or operations related to passes and it wont be allowed to connected to cameras or worlds and become a master compositioning material
3- Having compositor properties tab like modifiers tab that geometry nodees use, so we can expose some values for compositor nodes for easy use and it can be more like layer system UI in compositor tab, so people can add new nodes in there as well like materials tab, so it will be similar also to other renderers compositor logic, just open the compositor tab for easy things without opening nodeview like sometimes we do in materials without opening shader editor. Also this tab can be used to manage all compositor materials like which material is connected to which world or camera or which compositor material is the active master compositor material as mentioned in 2.5.
(I dont know coding but I did many phottoshopped ideas for how these mentioned things look in UI)
I desperately desire a way to combine world strength with exposure with a camera.
In a single scene with a camera for indoors and another camera for outdoors it’s so annoying when I switch back and forth. Yes, multiple scenes is probably the official solution for this but I’m still not sure how the whole “scene” thing works so I avoid it.
I also desperately desire to do it because rendering a good scene is all about trials and there is no way to try different looks or save them in a orderly manner without forgetting which compositor setup or exposure used for a certain light scenario from a camera,
And I agree with you, scene is not a good way to do it, it make duplicates or when u change something other scene doesnt change and its hard to deal with the technicalities of object mesh data just to have differennt camera world post process exposure scnearios, so I hope compositor can be integrated with worlds and cameras as a compositor material so we can manage different style or scenarios of light or feel of the scenes
By the way, Are you the same person who liked my right click select proposal about this , I remember somone who said this there, Thank you also for ur comment here if u are the same person as that person,
Yes u r right, I know there is a way to do it , actually I tried it before with big expectations when I first found out about scenes, still but not the best way to do and hard to handle while making design decisions or big changes in scene and just for a lighting scenario need, having another scene is not so good efficient and meaningful, If u try 50 lighting scnearo or 50 camera, one new scene for each camera would be strange
(when I tried that before it caused some moved object to be lost or when I add object in new one it doesnt appear in old one, or when duplicating linked object to new collection in a linked scene becomes a object of that scene, then old scene doesnt have that object. So when there are thusands of objects, it might be hard to handle. So Creating new objects in new collections or new collections causes some issues about these,) So its only good when scene is fully done and only preparing different lighting to sell the scene or something
Yes even an addon could to that links between light world and compositor and camera, I would do if I knew some coding. Thats why I said it here, so we can have multiple compositor nodetree like materials to have basis for these linking between camera-world-compositor in the future if someone do it.
While i agree that having so many scenes is probably not the way to go, the problems with missing objects and things like that is probably user error.
I think the basic thing one needs to understand is that the collections within a scene can be used my multiple scenes.
If you have collectionA in scene1 and also in scene2 you can add a cube tothis collection and it will appear in both scenes.
If you add a cube in scene1 but inside a collection which is not in scene2 then the cube will not appear in scene2.
So the name linked scene might be a bit misleading because it is actually just 2 scenes with the same linked collections.
The 50 light setups seem like they could be a case for view layers though.
Photographer addon does exactly that. Sets up stuff per camera, including exposure (with more real camera controls) and you can render several cameras at once.
It kinda does some exposure things but its just an addon and its not built in and also ts not easy to change things for each camera from camera properties even in photographer. if we want same mood in 10 camera, its repeating to try to edit them one by one to make them same,
(its easier to link a compositor node to each camera)
Its not just about exposure or camera, there are more things to it like having different styles or moods for different cameras by having compositor materials that can be assigned to any camera or world.
So, I am not just talking about just camera, it was just a part of it, also I talk about linking compositors to world to make more stylized or moodful worlds.
There will be more iniutive design process in terms of lighting and mood, so designers can try different moods more easily or people can share compositor materials that give different moods then people get the same looks and it will make everything better (it wont be dependant on photographer addon, it will be more built in improvement that wont complicate things, it will be more like extra functionality)
Yes thats what I mean I was talking about collections that cause loss of objects etc., I just didnt explain it in detail, so if someone keep appending collections and improving the scene, it wont be so inuitive to watch for collections all the time.
Yes I agree its misleading its more like ‘‘linked collection’’ rather than ‘‘scene’’
Its more than light setups but its about each camera having different mood or each world have different mood, not the full scene,
By the way, Brecht moved this tread as ‘‘compositor ideas’’, its mostly about compositor, specificallyaving multiple compositor nodetreee materials and being able to link/assign them to worlds and cameras
I hope this treat will help in terms of reaching people who can implement these ideas as codes or giving such people inspiration rather than finding workarounds.
(If we always try to content with alternative solutions like scenes or photographer addon, it wont improve blender compositor usability)
It’s not really that hard or convoluted. I use it all the time in scenes with 10+ cameras and is a complete lifesaver.
Of course, it’s not built-in, not like that’s a problem, it works well enough. You can choose how to adjust exposure and it’s then about using the same values.
What you want is a very dangerous thing, you want to link a camera to a compositor nodeset.
You should be aware about the fact compositing is post-processing. It works after the render, and it should remain agnostic about the render other than grabbing the selected passes.
Cameras are elements in our scenes, if you need several cameras with their compositing nodes, use linked scenes. Those are exactly to solve that problem.
I get you and your problem, but I honestly think you see a problem where no one else does. If you want exposure per camera, a few addons do exactly that and then some. If you want different compositing for different cameras, scenes are the tool for that.
Neither of those are particularly hard or cumbersome to setup, with the render layers node you work on a single compositing tab and manage it all from there. It exactly does what you need without doing stuff like linking scene elements into the post-processing part.
Most importantly, it’s often a one-time setup. Not like you would spend hours setting up nodes, and linked scenes make everything quite transparent to work with. Also, scenes introduce a few other advantages, they’re an often overlooked feature no one wants to use while those solve a lots of problems in a rather elegant way.
Nothing is about only ‘‘exposure’’ only , but you keep trying to give arguments to say I am doing all this for exposure or small purposes.
So I wont reply further to you about this, this place is not blender artist place to give workarounds to people, its about improving idea and feature request. I didnt ask for workarounds from you , if there is someone who is interested in improving and finding solutions about this idea, they will. Thats the point. (The workarounds you state are similar to light groups workarounds that people show before light groups feature came, like people who usually say ‘‘blender already can already do it with’’)
If you are not interested in an idea and better usability, you dont need to comment to prevent that ideas improvement to make the tread go out of topic by distraction, thats usually how that happens on treads,
yes it would be great to share different post processing styles and using them like Assets to try different looks for the render, it would be almost like a LUT , but more than a LUT that only contain color tweaks, it can have dirt overlays or any overlayed images, logos, watermarks or dirts on camera, different lens distortion amounts, different noise amounts, different blurs or many more personal things that u want rendered image to have, not just for exposure or simple things. There will be more time for artistic things than technical things to think. It would be a game changer to test different looks so fast by just dragging and dropping a compositor node asset and downloading different ones and using them.
These can be added to the asset browser, drag and drop also works effortlessly, and you could yes, distribute blend files with lots of node groups solving problems.
With scenes and render layers you can make it easy and effortless changing compositing settings per camera, using linked scenes. It’s all there, and it’s easy enough to use.
Make your case on how would you improve on the existing solutions Blender offers, because those do everything you ask for and then some. Your solution pretends to add a duplicated way to do something we can already do, without offering tangible benefits.
