Render not showing emission in Cycles?

Question

The render is missing all the glow even though in the render preview it looks right, the render looks this way after saving it.

This is with no compositing done.

Sure, here is the file.
https://www.mediafire.com/file/oighgb4kqzf1q12/SpaceSuitRings.blend/file — Dany Ramirez, Mar 03 '22 at 03:28
i cannot reproduce your error. I see glow in rendered preview and render — Chris, Mar 03 '22 at 03:39
@Chris &DanyRamirez The problem is not the render, it's saving the emission on a transparent background in a format (presumably PNG?) which cannot handle premultiplied alpha. There are many questions here and elsewhere on the internet regarding this topic, for example this one: Emission is not visible when imported into Photoshop — Gordon Brinkmann, Mar 03 '22 at 07:15
As Josh Sanfelici says in the link provided by Gordon Brinkmann, Emission on alpha 0 doesn't seem to work for PNG, choose OpenEXR instead — moonboots, Mar 03 '22 at 07:35

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 03 '22 at 04:04

I guess you open your picture file with Window's default picture viewer or something like that.

These default Microsoft softwares are very unreliable, I highly suggest you to use another one. There are plenty of free options that have a decent support for CGI standards, like XnView MP.

But basically, the issue is how your viewer treats alpha. Most simplistic software will make a choice among all the possible ways and give no tools for the user to choose. Leaving you with dirty viewings when the setting is wrong. But nothing is wrong with the picture, only the way the viewer displays it is wrong. And a more serious tool should at least give you options to correct it.

I don't think his Mac will use a Windows picture viewer ;) But the reason will be quite similar. If he rendered a PNG with emission over transparency, this will not look correct, not even imported back in Blender. — Gordon Brinkmann, Mar 03 '22 at 07:07

Render not showing emission in Cycles?

1 Answers1