motion blur alternatives?

[JoelOtron]

If you are doing Scene moblur--make sure your turn AA off (not needed) that should buy you back some render time.

Otherwise--render with vector pass and use real smart motionblur and do it in post.

[kmdguy]

I do nearly all of my motion blur in post using ReelSmart motion blur by Re:Vision Effects. It works great and save a lot of time.

[Navstar]

Let me second RE:vision RSMB. It's awesome! I never do motion blur any more inside my 3D apps.

[wonky]

Is it good enough where objects enter frame at speed? What does it track?
Do you render out slightly bigger than you need so that it has some pixels to look at.

[slouchcorp]

does anyone use reelsmart on a 64bit xp machine? any problems?

mike

[base80]

For some rare cases this setup can help:
Trailing Taillights (http://www.base80.com/index.php/2007/10/31/trailing_taillights) Zero impact on render times. Works for propellors too
http://www.base80.com/mograph/tracer/taillights/blades.gif

[Navstar]

RSMB can use C4D's multipass motion vector to drive blurs or optical flow. In most cases optical flow is completely automatic. The Pro version adds tracking point control so you can tell it specific regions to look at or ignore.

You can download a free demo on their site: http://www.revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/downloads/

[51M0N]

So we need the Pro, not the Full version, to work with c4d's motion vector pass right?

[paulselhi]

base80..the problem with your example is that the prop itself is too clear, i think you also get this with VMB and only SMB will actualy fully MB the whole image

[Navstar]

Yeah, Pro is the way to go. The best $150 you'll spend.

[Navstar]

Oh, I wanted to add a caveat. You should always render motion vectors at 16-bit. Some objects don't output motion vectors. So far, objects with Spline Wrap do not seem to output correct motion vectors. In that case, I use the standard 2D RSMB.

Also, your motion vector layer needs an alpha channel (which C4D doesn't do). So I precomp in AE and use luma key to key out the black. You don't want an anti-aliased key as that blurs colors together which would give incorrect vector values.

[tcastudios]

Yea, for rotating stuff mixing between geometry and a pre rendered picture
can often work (airplanes and choppers at distance at least.

A small test mixing between geometry and pict based on velocity
>Here QT3mb (http://homepage.mac.com/tcastudios/tempfiles/SteadyROTORtestS.mov)<

Cheers
Lennart

[Navstar]

Yea, for rotating stuff mixing between geometry and a pre rendered picture
can often work (airplanes and choppers at distance at least.

A small test mixing between geometry and pict based on velocity
>Here QT3mb (http://homepage.mac.com/tcastudios/tempfiles/SteadyROTORtestS.mov)<

Cheers
Lennart

Very clever! So the blur part is just an animated texture on a plane? And you blending between the two in C4D or in post?

[tcastudios]

That is Cinema only. The blur object is a disc with layered gradients (alfa and colors) material. (No texture). And the mix is not "animated", it mix depending on rotation speed :)

Cheers
Lennart

[iTHiNK]

That's a really clever solve Lennart.. my only suggestion would be to offset the texture so there is not blur in front of the object as well.

As far as RSMB - that's what I use as well. Apparently deformed geometry doesn't output vectors (well documented in other threads). But can anyone explain to me why sometimes I get scenes where the ENTIRE scene blurs? Even stuff that is completely static?

[tcastudios]

That's a really clever solve Lennart.. my only suggestion would be to offset the texture so there is not blur in front of the object as well.


I don't think that is a good idea based on that a filmcamera shutter open and close at approx
the same speed.....

Cheers
Lennart

[iTHiNK]

yeah, you are right.. there is usually blur on both sides of the object. I should have clarified I guess. It just seems very *even* to me. This kind of situation would probably just come down to reference I guess. Either way - it looks great in motion, and would definitely work in the backgound no problem.

Kudos!

-Chris

[Navstar]

Lennart, you should post a video on how you did that. :bowdown:

[Francky]

Well I for one am thinking of dropping C4D because of the Motion Blur problems.

Kinda sucks after I just finished learning it and all, but if there is no major announcement at Siggraph about this, I'll have to go back to XSI. Deformed Geometry not generating Motion Vectors should have been fixed 10 years ago, and this also in turns prevents Vray from doing Full Motion Blur as well. This caused a lot of headaches on my last project.

I can't wait for Siggraph to happen, as I'm stuck now wondering if I should start project in C4D or XSI because of this.

[Per-Anders]

Deformed mesh vectors are not the reason VRay for C4D can't do MB, they're perfectly accessible in the API, as is matrix transformation (for whole object curves), what isn't accesible is subframe sampling unless you call a SMB prerender skipping the subframes and use the data from the built caches then or build your own caches and manually call the document animate functions. That the C4D motion vectors multipass doesn't currently output deformed mesh vectors is simply a problem with the motion vectors multipass itself, a bug or a missing feature in that is all.

[wonky]

One xtra pass within C4D is what SHOULD be the case.
Messing around with keying vectors in AE etc is pretty poor. I hope some new render engine is announced. Animation is a real problem for me, GI, Motion Blur, no environment haze options etc. I am tired of using tricks to hide horizons etc when ancient apps like Bryce (I know it is a trick) can do it. The modules like dynamics etc are pretty much unusable too.
:cry:
rant over - back to work

[JoelOtron]

One xtra pass within C4D is what SHOULD be the case.
Messing around with keying vectors in AE etc is pretty poor. I hope some new render engine is announced. Animation is a real problem for me, GI, Motion Blur, no environment haze options etc. I am tired of using tricks to hide horizons etc when ancient apps like Bryce (I know it is a trick) can do it. The modules like dynamics etc are pretty much unusable too.
:cry:
rant over - back to work


---Just to be clear--you're not KEYIING vectors are you? If you have RSMBpro, you just assign that vector pass as the source and BOOM-- its done--motion blur.
Also--did you try doing SMB with AA turned off?

-Are you having trouble with the FOG setting in the environment Objet? Thats what I use all the time for fog. Its not perfect but good enough most of the time. There is also the Pelham fog shaders that have been around since c4d 6--I think those stil work (assuming anyone still has 'em on their HD).

--As mentioned here in the forum many times, GI can be sped up for animation (in SOME CASES-not all) using stochstic GI and SMB. Its much faster and may help.

Other than that if you cant deal with AR--theres VRAY which some have switched to over AR.

I agree--we need some more modern additiins to AR. Im sure we'll get them soon.

[wonky]

Just bought Reelsmart Pro and so far so good. I would like more detail on the vector aspect in EA, Luma key etc- what settings. I have precomped to a black solid - I am not getting the result I expected. Default settings will do just fine for this project but I would like to get advise on exactly what to do to fix the motion vector movie in AE.

Thanks to everyone who posted on this - I doubt I will use scene motion blur again.

[JoelOtron]

I get the feeling you are not fully digesting the resposnes being given in this thread.


You do not need to luma mask or key your vector pass or footage at all.

Take a look at the documentation that comes with the plugin. Its pretty straightforward.

Also--dont give up on SMB--there are occasions where you can only do it that way--and its pretty fast with no AA.

[ssalo]

Just a side note. When using ReelSmart (with Vectors or not), make sure you rendered files - and AE project also - are floating points (32 bits). Otherwise your blurred highlights look grey and muddy.

-Sami

[Navstar]

My previous note about keying the vection motion layer was a special exception to the rule.. I only had to do that once because my vector blur layer was blurring everything. The prekeying solved the problem. So normally you don't. Hope I didn't confuse you. The RSMB plug-ins have pretty good documentation as well as step-by-step instructions for C4d.

[mustardseed]

Lennart, that is AWESOME!

How did you achieve the illusion of backward rotation? Is that the disc actually rotating backwards, or a true optical effect?

I'm casting my vote for a quick tut too, please! :bowdown:

andrew

That is Cinema only. The blur object is a disc with layered gradients (alfa and colors) material. (No texture). And the mix is not "animated", it mix depending on rotation speed :)

Cheers
Lennart

[Sneaker]

Yeah, Pro is the way to go. The best $150 you'll spend.
What's the difference between pro and full.
I didn't find any comparison.

-Michael

[Navstar]

Pro supports C4D's vector motion multipass layer as well as the ability to use motion from other clips as well as excluding areas to not blur.

[Sneaker]

many thanks,
sounds interesting.

-Michael

[govinda]

You do not need to luma mask or key your vector pass or footage at all.

Actually you do. C4D doesn't write an alpha into the Motion Vector pass, which RSMB needs. Vixol used to solve this, didn't it? Different people get their alphas different ways, but Pierre of Reelsmart says just to do a Luma Key set to 1 and to fiddle with feather and tolerance. The other option is to alpha matte with your RGBA pass, and also to lay down a green layer underneath in the precom just in case of fringe. Then it might be necessary to add a matte choker to that precomp before placing it in your main comp, and then in the main comp finally you throw an adjustment layer with RSMB motion vectors up near the top, referencing you motion vector precomp, which will be turned off and placed wherever you like in the layer order.

Chris Montesano of ZBlur fame tells me that it's really simple coding to develop a Vixol-like function to apply the alpha to the motion vector pass. It's maybe just never been something that the developers have gotten their teeth into, but that's just speculation.

The results with motion vectors are still wonky in a few ways however. You can get things like 'splashing' where two fast-moving objects intersect, you get 'echoes' of fast-moving objects so that there's blur a bit behind where it should be...it all works out in the end even for HD quality, but it's not optimal, and makes me wonder how RenderMan, Mental Ray and the other top render engines' motion blurs look, even Lightwave 9 for that matter.

[JoelOtron]

govinda--It wasnt clear from the OP's post that he understood how to apply the vector pass. Judging from the post, it sounded like he thought he needed to use the vector as a matte to his 3d footage (rather than just slecting it as the source for motion blur in the effect) I may have misinterpreted.

And yeah--in order to get overlapping objects to play nice (without blurring together and getting unwanted results) you need to break your scene up into sepearate vector passes if posssible

[govinda]

Hah, sorry Joel, that was pretty silly of me to do the full monty on something you know so well already, but I was a bit tired and got into typorrhea.

[JoelOtron]

Ewww? ;)

No its no problem Govinda.

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