Hey everyone!

I just downloaded a candle otl from Orbolt but when I try to render it, the flame appears solid white. in the render view in Houdini it displays the ramp that's specified in the flame shader. So my dumb question is how can I get the exported render to look the same as what appears in the Render View tab?

I've tried tweaking the point locations on the ramp in the flame shader as well as adjusting the temperature of the flame itself and nothing has changed. I've included the project file I was using as well as the otl itself.

Thanks in advance!

**UPDATE**

Spoke with a friend about this problem. I was originally exporting as .png or .tiff. I tried exporting it as .exr and opening in Nuke. Got the look I wanted so I exported that as an .exr which finally appeared as I had hoped when I opened it in AE.

I know it's a bit of a work-around and I'm not sure why it worked that way.. but it did. If anyone reading this has an explanation as to why this may be the case I would still be interested in hearing it!

Hey iwilson2,

I did a frame render keeping the file as is set to tiff.

Used windows picture viewer and the flame only appears white(it is visible but very ‘washed out’ because of the now entire white background) for the part outside the candle ‘outline’. The part of the flame within the candles outline retains the orange colors but appears a bit faded.

So this made me think, it must have something to do with the alpha channel/s.

I then opened up the file in photoshop and it treated the file as it should be and looks just the same as in Houdini render.

So I don't know what exactly it is that you would need to do, but it seems to me you might have to look into how the alpha channel/s are getting treated in your pipepline/final application.

Hi,

This could be related to linear colour space in general but more specifically, the Output Gamma setting when you save the image. If you uncheck “Convert to Image Format's Colorspace”, you can set the Output Gamma to match AE. I think png have some sort of built-in gamma correction which can be avoided by setting the gamma manually. ie. Setting the Gamma to 2.2 by unchecking the box might be worth trying.

It could also be related to the alpha channel as BabaJ mentions. I've noticed when using the default settings, the alpha on a png is applied as a transparency onto the colour channels, whereas an EXR saves the alpha as a separate channel. When importing an EXR into Photoshop, you have an option to keep the alpha as a channel or apply it as a transparency. (I don't use AE or Nuke so I'm not sure about those)

hope that helps
Rob