Depth Blur Artifacts and Background Loader question

#1

Greetings,

I’m fairly new to DF, so please bear with me. I have been encountering artifacts while using the depth blur tool on my 3D footage form XSI (which renders separate .ZPics for depth information). The artifacts look like slight fringing/speckling in between the edges of the image and the blur effect. Is it because ZPics are not antialiased? Unfortunately XSI cannot render out Z-Coverage information.

I’ve also read that depth blurring over a black background could be the problem… and this leads me into my next question. I tried merging my footage overtop a background to see if the black was causing my depth blur problem. However, its seems that when merging footage over a background loader causes the loss of Z-Depth information. Checking and unchecking Merge Z-Depth has no effect.

I will supply a photo to illustrate my problem if necessary.

Any ideas?

#2

welcome to the limitations of z-buffers… :thumbsdow

I don’t have time to get into great detail here and now, but basicly, what happens in a 2D post blur is that there is no information of the scene behind an object, and thus the blur blurs against the colour information it does have. In this case the object.

What can be done is to seperate your scene into “layers” and blur each one independantly.

#3

That’s really the only way? I really like the functionality of DF’s Depth Blur tool…and it’s compatability with XSI. That’s a shame. So it’s really impossible to have a Depth blur without artifacts?

Also, any idea on why Z-depth info gets destroyed when merged over a background loader?

Thanks Jay

#4

That may be a bug… I’d have to explore with it to make sure, but if it is, i’ll be sure to report it.

#5

Thanks,

Should I even bother posting an example of my Depth blur artifacts?

Any idea on how Z-Coverage can help?

#6

Also, why is it that Depth Fog doesn’t give me any trouble when using ZPics?

#7

Fog doesn’t have the same problem since it’s only modifying the data (pixels) that is there. Depth bluring has to create data that doesn’t really exist and this has artifacts.

#8

So basically then, the Depth Blur tool is completely useless in production?

#9

I’m having problems with zpic from XSI too in DF, acctually not just in DF but…

I would like to see your problem alphatron, maybe it gives me some bright idea 8p

See ya! 8)

#10

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