This is what happens when a render artist believes in the potential of iclone 7.

Author	Message
wildstar	wildstar Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Month Posts: 1.2K, Visits: 5.1K	This is what happens when a render artist believes in the potential of iclone 7. I've been testing iclone 7 since last October with the launch of the closed beta, and I confess that until last week I was still wary if the iclone had the potential to do photorealism for architecture or 3D animations with commercial quality, and unfortunately the answer is no . Unless you're willing to do what I did and deal with some limitations. I started designing these two rooms in an evermotion house from my model library. I did everything right, I reduced the polycount to the maximum, I used everything I had learned by studying iclone 7 since its beta launch. And as the scene got ready I saw it and did not believe it, it was beautiful. And really met all my demands thanks to the new color space provided by the pbr, and the global ilumination provided by the VXGI So I was rendering the animation, then the headaches began. Any professional used to it quality of professional render provided by software like after effects, element3d, hitfilm, 3d max, lumion etc, realizes that something is very wrong in the render output of the iclone 7. first tried 1080p with 3x subsampling and all the cameras with DOF (I will post the videos below) rendering a lot of very bad output filled with shake, serrated, and artifacts, so I took the dof and understood that the problem would be DOF really as I thought and I used the iclone's FOG to generate a fake z - depth to generate the dof in after effects, it was much better, but for the true is very limited, it is possible to see the masks, and the video still had some flickers and undesirable artifacts (soon after I was realizing that the total fault is Supersampling of iclone) so already quite frustrated I went to the last attempt, to render in 4k in preview mode where I would have almost the same time of rendering of 1080p and a resolution so high have power to replace supersampling. So all the beauty of the iclone rendering came up, perfect details, perfect dof, no visible masks, but I still had some headaches, in preview mode iclone 7 somehow does not manage the shadow map well, and I I experienced in some scenes undesirable horizontal lines and boxes in the image where they should be shadows. Conclusions. 1 - the supersampling of iclone 7 is totally useless, or you get it out in the next patch and only implement it again after you have fixed everything, or iclone 7 will never be taken seriously as a rendering tool. 2 - Stop trying to do wysiwyg with the viewport of the iclone. By god is a game engine, just put more controls for users to control their renders as various levels of antialias, a dof blur control, I do not need my output to be equal to my viewport with regard to dof I just need to have Blur control of my dof, simple as well. 3 - After a whole weekend of testing and almost giving up on iclone 7 I can say, iclone DOF masks do not need to be improved what needs to be improved its the damn supersampling and the way it handles DOF camera (I began to hate him now with all my might) 4 - the only thing the dof needs to improve is the way it deals with opacity maps which is very bad, f or these cases the only way out is to use the Fake Z-depth technique with FOG 1 version 1080p 3x supersampling fake Z-depth 2 version 1080p 3x supersampling native iclone dof 3 version 4k preview dowsized to 1080p using native dof in 2 days i will delete the others versions and just 4k will be in my channel

dr.zap	dr.zap Posted 7 Years Ago
Veteran Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 6 Years Ago Posts: 164, Visits: 824	Good job! They are almost there. I can't wait to see how your other animation comes out. What were your average render times per frame?

wildstar	wildstar Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Month Posts: 1.2K, Visits: 5.1K	dr.zap (7/25/2017) Good job! They are almost there. I can't wait to see how your other animation comes out. What were your average render times per frame? 10 secs per frame or less. the ALL animation animation with 4800 frames att 30 FPS got something Like 3 hours to render using 2 workstations with 1070 gtx

TonyDPrime	TonyDPrime Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 4 Months Ago Posts: 3.4K, Visits: 12.4K	Look at this. A simple 1080p render with DOF on...Notice the pink vase on the forward table and the back chairs...blocky Atari 7800 graphics Now without DOF...cool, crisp, like a beachwood aged Commodore Amiga promo pic. But, let me just up-res it, right?....WRONG.... (5000 x 2813)...still blocky.... Anything caught in the blur-zone is blocky. Now what did I notice is that the resulting image is blocky in the same spots where my Viewport is blocky. So, I next made the viewport tiny (about 1/10 of the workspace) by dragging the timeline up as high to the top of the screen as it would go, and then I get this result @1080p! Keep in mind, same DOF settings!!!...LOL So, next I maximized the size of the viewport by x-ing out the timeline and narrowing stuff on the sides (workspace panes), and I get this...Again, same DOF settings @1080p... Then I see Ctrl-7 actually puts the viewport at full screen, so I did that, rendered, and this is now what I got (1080p)... Okay...So Say Hello to my Little Conclusion... The size of the Viewport affects how DOF will be rendered!!! Why?...It looks like DOF blur is not placed on a resulting image, but rather on the viewport, and that itself is what is carried over to the rendered image. Pretty nifty, huh?! So, Wildstar, you could add all the Anti-Alias and Super-Sampling you want, it would still be F'd up. The rendering process timeline is what is causing the breakdown, it seems like. Like, it shouldn't smack the blur before it renders and just go with that, it should smack the blur on afterwards, at the sought after resolution, and go with that... Does this make sense, I feel like that's what my pics show it does. But, try it out yourself! Mess with the viewport size and see how it affects DOF! I call this DOVF ("Depth of Viewport Field")...:hehe: Brilliant!:kiss: Oh, and BTW - your work is spectacular. The artistry is what stands out, just as much as the technical accomplishment. -Tony D.

Rampa	Rampa Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Week Posts: 8.2K, Visits: 62.5K	This is seriously cool! Now we can get DOF that looks like real lenses. Say hello to close-ups at F1.4. :) It takes longer to render, but actually can do a fantastic job. Just make sure you have a bit of range in the DOF setting, otherwise you'll get jaggies. Screen setup. I guess we'll have to figure out a screen-space to F-stop conversion factor. both of these are straight from iClone. DOF off, then on.

Kelleytoons	Kelleytoons Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 6 days ago Posts: 9.2K, Visits: 22.1K	Wait a minute -- I realize it's 5:30am here, and I just woke up 10 minutes ago, but what are we saying? Are we saying that the ideal is to close down all the windows on the sides to make the viewport as large as possible? What about running in, say, 4K on your monitor? What effect would THAT have? My brain is reeling -- and if all of this (or any of it) is true, then RL could EASILY fix this (by just "assuming" a viewport size rather than taking what is given). Is fixing DOF really THAT easy? I need to wake up a bit, have some coffee and figure out what is going on here, because DOF is really important to me (as it is to many of you). Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

Kelleytoons	Kelleytoons Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 6 days ago Posts: 9.2K, Visits: 22.1K	Wait -- I read a little more (and am SLOWLY waking up) -- we're saying we get more blur the smaller the viewport is, right? Yipes -- again, RL MUST get this fixed (heck, they could have some sort of dial in the DOF settings to just adjust blur by assuming a certain size for render. SIgh -- my brain STILL isn't awake but I have to explore this now). Alienware Aurora R16, Win 11, i9-149000KF, 3.20GHz CPU, 64GB RAM, RTX 4090 (24GB), Samsung 870 Pro 8TB, Gen3 MVNe M-2 SSD, 4TBx2, 39" Alienware Widescreen Monitor Mike "ex-genius" Kelley

TonyDPrime	TonyDPrime Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 4 Months Ago Posts: 3.4K, Visits: 12.4K	Kellytoons - you are right! The size of the monitor, in theory, could have an affect on your ability to render out DOF at a higher resolution. As the viewport resolution's blur is what is carried over, and NOT the actual specified resolution, if you had a 4K monitor, you could full screen it up to max viewport size and the blur from that would transfer over to the render, at 4K, vs the blurred area resolution transferring over from a normal HD monitor, at HD... I know, I know, we are outside the box here, but you are right in the hunch about the monitor, I am thinking, I myself can't test it. But what Rampa showed is that currently, with a combination of DOF settings plus either minimizing, or maximizing, the size of the viewport, you might find your sought after DOF look. He minimized his and gave it a DOF setting that yielded him the blur he wanted. In his case, smaller led to ideal result. In my case, the larger would lead closer to the ideal result. I did create a Feedback Tracker ticket on this asking them to make it blur at the rendered resolution, not the viewport resolution. Rampa also commented it took longer to render. I saw that too, on the one I did when the viewport was made tiny by dragging, like he did, the timeline up to the top of the screen and thus minimizing the viewport. As such, we will likely be looking at longer render times if DOF is achieved properly. However, if fixed we wouldn't have to rely on, as Rampa says, an F-stop to Viewport size("Screen-space") conversion factor! ...Love it, Good one! :P

TonyDPrime	TonyDPrime Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: 4 Months Ago Posts: 3.4K, Visits: 12.4K	I wanted my Blur to look like this (image via Octane Render)

wildstar	wildstar Posted 7 Years Ago
Distinguished Member Group: Forum Members Last Active: Last Month Posts: 1.2K, Visits: 5.1K	Brilliant discovery Tony, you saved my day, but it needs to be clear to reallusion that the great culprit of all this is the supersampling or when you turn on the final quality they are responsible for this mess in the render, if you use the preview mode, None of this happens.

This is what happens when a render artist believes in the potential of iclone 7.

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