Yet another humble feature request

@ndy · Post by **@ndy** » Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:12 pm

hey,
this is my first post here and i want to start right away with a new feature request. those ideas might not be very new, but i stumbled over them during the production of my last short movie. i simply realised that there's of a lack of certain functions which are very useful in muvie productions in general. i tried to sketch those ideas to make them easier to discribe.

1. Render Preferences

i'd find it VERY useful to be able to save render resolutions, aspect ratio... mostly everything in the Display buttons. speaking not of the b.blend now. the user could create his own resolutions and those are then saved to a preferences file - say .bpref - besides the existing ones.

i know, all the settings could be saved to a local b.blend file, but an external preferences file would make it easier for us to share resolutions ["hey wow... i found a good one, let's share it!"]
maybe there should be also a "load presets file" button near the load button...

2. DOF included

yep, that's not a new request, but i was REALLY missing that one, since the zblur plugin needs to be recompiled for the new blender versions, i couldnt use it for my movie. it would be cool to have a more realistic looking blur [definately not gaussian] with the BOKEH effect. like seen in the image, the focus point could be set by another object or an IPO.

3. better MotionBlur including Vector blur

i hope this image explains the idea. atm this is only a rough one.

those features are vital for a movie production [otherwhise, how would you hide your mistakes?

]. i made those images just to sketch out where those functions could be placed into the interface. this is not final, just an idea... and yet another humble feature request.

lemme hear your opinion

.andy

Friday13 · Post by **Friday13** » Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:47 pm

Great ideas! We really need more ideas like this to improve Blender's functionality.

z3r0_d · Post by **z3r0_d** » Sun Jun 15, 2003 10:18 pm

... and what method of dof do you propose?
good dof is so slow that having a scanling renderer is pointless. I think it would be better put into another renderer

... but I could see (and use) the zblur plugin becoming a standard sequence plugin, or an additional render option (sorta as you suggest)

sten · Post by **sten** » Mon Jun 16, 2003 7:38 am

hey andy!

I fully understand it and support your ideas,
good suggestions!

I know you have the skill to demand these features

yours

Friday13 · Post by **Friday13** » Mon Jun 16, 2003 8:51 pm

z3r0_d wrote: ... but I could see (and use) the zblur plugin becoming a standard sequence plugin, or an additional render option (sorta as you suggest)

I agree with this. It would be great to see all of the important Texture/Sequence plugins integrated with Blender.

kaktuswasser · Post by **kaktuswasser** » Tue Jun 17, 2003 3:17 pm

those is exactly the stuff we need for movie production..
ui styles, translation etc. is nice.. but those are not the things we really need
for doing better cg work.

I dont know how hard it is to implent those features.. but I would literally kiss the feet of the coder who implents this stuff

cya henrik

Post by **ton** » Wed Jun 18, 2003 6:01 pm

good work, this gives inspiration.

I think you should explain 'vector blur'. Or is this just this 2d photoshop effect?

wavk · Post by **wavk** » Wed Jun 18, 2003 6:42 pm

Hi andy,

An addition to your first feature request:

I think the camera should have a lot of the settings that are now in the Display buttons. I'm getting tired of changing the resolution for each camera I render. I'm doing lots of architectural visualisation at the moment and it requires renders from different views and it's not always good to have each camera at the same resolution.

The image size buttons and preset buttons should at least move to the camera edit buttons. Also maybe the start and end frames should be camera dependant...

Think about it.

And I'm a big fan of presets, so that first feature of yours is great! Maybe add presets to a large number of areas in blender. I like lightwave's approach to that.

We all want dof, what can I say

Wybren

hanzo · Post by **hanzo** » Sat Jun 21, 2003 4:49 am

Hey @ndy when you said "like seen in the image, the focus point could be set by another object or an IPO. " is this what you ment.. IF so I think we should have both IPO and visual..

Their all great ideas man keep it up

Dani · Post by **Dani** » Sat Jun 21, 2003 7:14 pm

These are good suggestions!

In rendering options, (i think it has been said elsewhere, but where?)
I would suggest to have layered rendering :
-specular layer
-per lamp layers (optional)
-shadows layer
-per lamp layers (optional)
-diffuse layer
-per object layers (optional)
....

Please forgive me if it has already been taken account of.

And, I second Wavk's suggestion about moving some things into the Camera panel. To his suggestions I'd add the "Exposure" slider which is at the moment in the World Panel.

Okay!
Thx

Dani

@ndy · Post by **@ndy** » Sun Jun 22, 2003 2:03 pm

oh hey, great you still care about this topic

z3r0_d wrote:... and what method of dof do you propose?
good dof is so slow that having a scanling renderer is pointless. I think it would be better put into another renderer

... but I could see (and use) the zblur plugin becoming a standard sequence plugin, or an additional render option (sorta as you suggest)

well, i think a better DOF filter could be possible without getting slower rendering. it would be okay if the zblur plugin could be implemented as a post processed DOF filter, but with a different blurring algorithm. something that is much closer to real lens blur [the current zblur plugin used gaussian blur].

ztonzy: this has nothing to do with skill

ton wrote:good work, this gives inspiration.

I think you should explain 'vector blur'. Or is this just this 2d photoshop effect?

i think 3DsMax and Lightwave have vector blur as plugins. it's an extremly fast alternative [well, not really...] to sample motion blur. i think it takes the movement data from certain objects in a frame and blurs the image according to those vector coords. the problem is that it bases on the movement of the object in the frame, so you'll be getting some weird results in some cases. here is a good description of that technique... even though it's LW

wavk wrote:Hi andy,

An addition to your first feature request:

I think the camera should have a lot of the settings that are now in the Display buttons. I'm getting tired of changing the resolution for each camera I render. I'm doing lots of architectural visualisation at the moment and it requires renders from different views and it's not always good to have each camera at the same resolution.

The image size buttons and preset buttons should at least move to the camera edit buttons. Also maybe the start and end frames should be camera dependant...

Think about it.

And I'm a big fan of presets, so that first feature of yours is great! Maybe add presets to a large number of areas in blender. I like lightwave's approach to that.

We all want dof, what can I say

Wybren

good point! maybe some render settings should be linked to the camera... or to make it more complicated: have a button in the display button "activate camera settings" which lets you define the render options in the camera buttons... oh well, i told you it's complicated.

hanzo: jes... and no. i thought of using something like a target point or using the coords of a fixed object for the DOF calculation.

/me pokes the coders "implement, implement, implement"

.andy

cmccad · Post by **cmccad** » Mon Jun 23, 2003 7:36 pm

@ndy wrote:good point! maybe some render settings should be linked to the camera... or to make it more complicated: have a button in the display button "activate camera settings" which lets you define the render options in the camera buttons... oh well, i told you it's complicated.

The way I would do it is to have a "link" button (maybe a picture of a chain?) next to the parameter. Having the parameter linked would make it the same as the global settings, but unlinking it would make it unique to that camera. So, for instance, the resolution for each camera could be different, but all the other parameters could be the same, and controlled thru the global settings.

Yes? No? What do y'all think?
Casey