Extra Buffers
These are buffers which shading system elements, such as the Material nodes and Shading Models, provide.
Most buffers are available here in direct and indirect versions. The "direct" buffers contain data from direct illumination of the surface, meaning the light that came directly from a light source. As opposed to the indirect buffers which contain data from the indirect illumination, that being light that got to the surface via an indirect route such as light that has bounced off another object via radiosity. Some buffers only become available when the materials pertaining to them are used.
Carpaint | Skin | PBSDF |
---|---|---|
Carpaint, Skin and Principled BSDF have several entries in the Extra Buffer list below |
Glossary
Direct
Indirect
Rho
Weight
Link to Back to Beauty
Show example using linear and srgb for compositing
clown colors
For most of the extra buffers listed here, there are two additional buffers available, labeled as Rho and Weight, introduced in LightWave 2019. The Rho buffers include the surface's color and any fresnel effects. Weight contains the value of the surface shader setting in this buffer as a percentage of its contribution to the render. A surface that was 100 % dielectric or metallic would have 0 diffuse weight because the diffuse component of the surface makes no contribution to the final render.
The Rho buffer is the BXDF reflection or transmission function that is being evaluated for each microfacet sample. They are intended for heavy compositing work and used to extract, for instance, the color from a specular buffer; by dividing the Rho by the specular direct and indirect to get the raw untinted reflection value.
|
Clearcoat Indirect |
Clearcoat Rho The Clearcoat_rho buffer provides the amount of Clearcoat occurring based on the way in which Clearcoat changes with glancing angles, fall off, etc. |
Clearcoat Weight This buffer shows the amount that the Clearcoat part of the scene's surfaces contributes to the overall render |
Dermis Direct |
Dermis Indirect |
Diffuse Direct |
Diffuse Indirect |
Diffuse Rho xxx |
Diffuse Weight xxx |
Epidermis Direct |
Epidermis Indirect |
Fog |
Hypodermis Direct |
Hypodermis Indirect |
Legacy Volumetric The left image shows a final render with a surface HyperVoxel cloud, the second image shows the Legacy Volumetric buffer |
Luminosity |
Raw RGB |
Reflection The dragon (PBSDF) is visible in this buffer in Image Viewer using the mouse to show the changing alpha, but not in a PNG. The ball is surfaced with Standard |
Refraction For this buffer we changed the dragon to use the Dielectric material |
Refraction Rho xxx |
Refraction Weight xxx |
SSS Direct |
SSS Indirect The green glow in this buffer is caused by the luminosity in the edges shown in the final render at the top of the list |
Shadow |
Sheen Direct Provided by nodes with a Sheen component, is the Sheen contribution from direct illumination |
Sheen Indirect |
Sheen Rho xxx |
Sheen Weight xxx |
Specular Direct |
Specular Indirect |
Specular Rho The specular_rho buffer provides the amount of reflection occurring based on the way in which reflection changes with glancing angles, fall off, and so forth |
Specular Weight xxx |
Translucency Direct |
Translucency Indirect |
Translucency Rho |
Translucency Weight xxx |
Volumetric Direct |
Volumetric Emission |
Volumetric Indirect Provided by the Volumetric system, is the volumetric's contribution from indirect illumination |
Volumetric Light xxx |
Volumetric Transmittance xxx |