Would it be possible for someone to clarify if the Distance Channel is working for Rhino 8 Render? The exported image is certainly not a distance map/zdepth - but I may have a setting which is distorting the image.
I’m using the Distance Channel for a controlnet for Stable Diffusion (ComfyUI). It’s part of a series of controlnets which influence the formation of an AI latent diffusion image and need to be perfectly aligned - defined by the Camera View. Ie exporting the viewport ShowZBuffer isn’t an efficient solution.
The export for the depth controlnet needs to be controllable by resolution, camera view, image ratios… just like a typical render - with a Distance Channel.
Perhaps someone has used a Depth Channel plugin export?
What do you mean it is not a depth map? Make sure you save the depth channel as EXR.
Also note that depth map as shown in the render window is a visualization, the data is in floats from 0 (where camera is) to a very high value (where the background is hit). Other than that the value in the pixels is the distance in model units from camera to that point.
I tried saving the Rhino 8 distance map as an EXR format and have adjusted the exposure settings in Photoshop 2025 but the depth information is not there. All other saved formats: jpg, png etc seem incorrect, as per the preview too.
Photoshop - with adjusted exposure to show variation in image:
Note that although a depth channel is typically a single-channel image we currently save it as RGBA with the RGB channels each the same value (being the depth value).
Thanks for the update Nathan. I tried to search for some info on the Depth Channel before posting, but I couldn’t find anything relevant on this forum. Perhaps I was looking in the wrong location?
It would be great to have ‘save paths’/ ‘file type’ for each channel, rather than have to do it manually each time from the render window? Perhaps there is a way that I’m missing - but it doesn’t seem obvious to me.
I look forward to updating Rhino with the Distance Channel resolved - as the Distance Map together with Normal Maps work really well with Controlnets for Stable Diffusion and AI ‘rendering’.
Thanks Nathan,
The issue isn’t about saving the channels into a single file - a more efficient solution would be to set paths for each type of render output - ie depth map is saved here as x format… RGB is saved here as y format… etc.
Also - wouldn’t it be great to be able to save multiple render settings for each view - instead of only having a single render setting per saved view?
With more people using AI workflows it would be great to have more integration with the Rhino Render output.
Perhaps I have misunderstood the way render settings work but within the settings dialogue box there is no way to save the Render Settings as an option. It seems to be a global setting and therefore there is no way to save presents. This would be useful to change to specific resolutions, quality settings, maintain continuity between files etc. The view: display mode settings are also based on these global settings.
Absolutely agree. I’m suggesting having Render Presets within the Document/File - to enable switching to different render settings, and to import/export these settings to another file. Similar to how most other Render programs are set up.
