fast blur reflection plugin?

[neonghost]

not really a great solution, but i've had limited success with noise streaks in the diffusion channel affecting reflection (this was for brushed stainless steel).

[azazel]

Try searching for distance faloff shader - not blurry reflections, but somewhat useful in similar cases, and quite fast.

[JamesMK]

Remotion does in fact have a plug for this, it's called 'reflector' and is part of the Paranormal package (that's probably why you couldn't find it). It handles ordinary reflection, refraction and blurred reflection. In terms of speed I haven't done any extensive testing, but I'd say it does a pretty good job speeding up blurred reflections. Better grab the 7-day trial and see if it suits your needs.

[kuui]

fine noise in bumpchannel disperes reflection, too, and that very fast. gotta test the balance between unwanted visible noise bump and blurred reflection like you want it to be.

[STRAT]

not perfect by any means, but i made a micro noise distortion shader a few months back that helps simulate normal blurry noise.

http://www.nikclark.com/strat/blur.jpg

available for free download from - http://www.nikclark.com/strat/blur.zip

[lllab]

strat thanks thats what i already tried too, but it is not good enough for my needs here.

james MK that is what i hoped! thanks a lot, i searched in ditools- stupid me!

thanks & cheers all

stefan
lllab

[lllab]

azazel:

i have the falloff shader of course, just one problem i have since 8.5 is that i cant adust it in the layer shader, it just doesnt open the settings, anyone can confirm this?

this is a fuction that really should be implemented into cienmas renderengine, simple distance falloff! - also working in layers!

cheers
stefan
lllab

[JamesMK]

I might add though, after making some quickie tests yesterday, that maybe the Reflector plug doesn't make much of a difference in terms of speed :sad: There are other advantages having reflection as a separate shader, but I'm not sure that performance was a priority... From what I can see it uses more or less the same method for blurring as the built-in dispersion, only with a different flavour of controls, but more or less the same speed... I might be wrong though, so I guess the best thing is for you to check it out yourself.

[lllab]

thanks jamesMK,

i just downloaded it and we will test it.

on the other hand i will give strats method another try with hight AA settings per rendertag and/or render at double sice and reduce afterwards to get rid of the noise.

will test both, thanks to both of you

cheers
stefan

[Cartesius]

I've had some success with kuui's method with a very fine bump to simulate blurred reflections.

/Anders

http://www.cartesiuscreations.com/galleries/gallery1/img1/canon.jpg

[azazel]

thanks jamesMK,

i just downloaded it and we will test it.

on the other hand i will give strats method another try with hight AA settings per rendertag and/or render at double sice and reduce afterwards to get rid of the noise.

will test both, thanks to both of you

cheers
stefan

rendering at double size will likely be faster than upping the antialiasing

[lllab]

oops, i overlooked kuuis post- sorry, i guess it is similar to what strat meant, i am trying in that direction at the moment, maybe also mixed with neonghost suggestion- thanks too kuui ,cartesius, neonghost!

cheers
lllab:-)

[bobtronic]

What I have done to fake blured reflection is to render with normal reflection and blur in
Paintshop. Then put the blured picture in Luminance channel with Frontal projection. It works
not for all situations but does a good job for planes and such objects. I will post an example
later.

Bob

[bobtronic]

oh, btw Remo's Reflector is really no choice for saving rendertimes. In fact I think its even
slower than Cinema's blured reflections. The advantage is that it is a shader and you can do
some nice effects in combination with other shaders.

Bob

[kuui]

here you can see slightly blurred reflection on the ground made with noise bump map...

the main difference is that real dispersed reflection in c4d as well as vray (which is the fastest renderer for blurry ref's i've ever seen, about 10 to 20 times faster in this matter)
gets softer and falls off to the edges of the reflection without getting grainy like the bump map...so you could try out a falloff like reversed fresnel for reflection combined with the same falloff for bump.

just an idea thats not tested yet by me, so no guarantee that it'll work hehe

[lllab]

interesting thread!

thanks for all the ideas!

i think this would be definitly a cool plugin, it should be possibe to combine a distance falloff with some amount of blurryness, so that the reflection layer gets blurred when it is more distant to the reflected object.
maybe some combination of shaders can do some fast blur effect? i will test further too.

thanks & cheers
lllab

[Per-Anders]

already done in a post effect was a part of cosmetic surgery. as well as fast blurry transparency. but it was limited, didn't work particularly well with bumpy surfaces. the only benefit was speed. but i just didn't think the quality was up to production standard.

http://www.peranders.com/c4d8/samples/jpg/vpblur03.jpg

[Cybergooch]

already done in a post effect was a part of cosmetic surgery. as well as fast blurry transparency. but it was limited, didn't work particularly well with bumpy surfaces.

Is cosmetic surgery still under development?

[lllab]

i have come up with an layer shader, which does some nice things, although it is far from real blurry effects:

in a distortion shader i put paranormals reflector(not blurred) and combine it with an multiplied distance falloff (plugin).

the distortion does some kind of blurryness and the distance falloff fades it in relation to distance., gives some interesting effect and renders very fast!

will test further.

cheers
lllab

[lllab]

hmm,

the distorter does some ok thing, but is there a shder in cinema or in a plugin that does just blur?

want i want to do: i want to blur the result of a layershader, so proceduals in the layershader gets blurred?

thanks

lllab

[lllab]

madame sadie, you wouldnt want to give away that shader- at our own risk?
your example looks quite nice!

cheers

llllab

[eldonaldo]

ill try some random-noise, no-AA plus Moblur 5 samples with shutter set to 2-3 thing later,.. just have to render some stuff first.

[azazel]

already done in a post effect was a part of cosmetic surgery. as well as fast blurry transparency. but it was limited, didn't work particularly well with bumpy surfaces. the only benefit was speed. but i just didn't think the quality was up to production standard.

http://www.peranders.com/c4d8/samples/jpg/vpblur03.jpg

You know, most of the 'fake' solutions do not look as good as the image you posted (noise in bump channel produces more noticeable grain, which is not always ok), and if it's fast, it surely would be useful.

[JamesMK]

ill try some random-noise, no-AA plus Moblur 5 samples with shutter set to 2-3 thing later,.. just have to render some stuff first.
While that sounds like a good theory, I'm afraid you'll get a lot of crawlies in an actual animation. Perhaps works well for a still though :thumbsup:

[eldonaldo]

lets see how that looks.. haven´t thought about behavior in motion but it looks good (while keepin an eye on rendertimes)..

got this with standard glossiness-settings on p4 HT 1GB Ram in 2 Minutes, 5 seconds (areashadows and stuff to make it more "complex"):

http://www.living-bytes.com/hosting/kreativstrich/glossy1.jpg

and this one with 5x Moblur, no AA and standard-noise shader globalscale set to 8%, bump intensity set to 5% in 49 seconds (btw. have a look at the penumbra that gets smooth too :) )

http://www.living-bytes.com/hosting/kreativstrich/glossy2.jpg

[kuui]

on these spheres the slightly stronger grain doesnt look bad, the problem is rather when used grainy noise on larger areas that actually don't reflect "visble" images but just lights or luminant areas.

in real world, this is of course the same, as glosiness IS blurred reflection, but that's not the same in CG.

it's kinda difficult to find the balance between totally washed out glossiness without any contrast and grainy glossiness that looks just wrong.

only thing that helps us is knowing that the other renderers, up to high end like mental ray, dont do really better with blurred ref in terms of speed and look....

som how much do er have to collect and pay to chaosgroup for getting vray to cinema?

[lllab]

"as glosiness IS blurred reflection"
that is very true

and that is why i consider fast blurry effects essential.

MR and ecspecially vray have blazing fast blurry effects. i have tested already.
a complex scene with a blurry metall shader + GI needed 1 hour in vray and in c4d it wasnt finished after a night! - thats bad grrrrr....

we are on the edge of getting max and vrayas extensions, although i would hate me for that, and it would be a quite expensive "plugin". i guess we wait until the next cinema update and then we will decide.

mdme sadie your blurry post effect would some people make very happy i guess, i would also be willing to pay for this shader/ effect?! you wouldn't...?

cheers

lllab

[lllab]

madame sadie,

is there a chance you make this part of cosmetic surgery at least available?

would be nice to know, if there is a chance or not.

thanks

stefan
lllab

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