On 1/28/2011 2:05 AM, Jaime Vives Piqueres wrote:

>> Oh, since you are gaining knowledge about mesh-based cameras, do you
>> know if they can be used to render certain effects like custom focal
>> blur? I seem to remember something about the mesh camera's ability
>> to take more than one sample, for AA or something.
>
> Yes, you can use several "stacked" meshes to accomplish a sort of AA,
> as in the example Jim pointed out.
>
> Theoretically, it could be used to do focal blur, but I've not tried
> that experiment yet (it's on the list, of course). I suppose it's just a
> matter of creating the meshes so that the face normals are the same on
> the focused region, and start to diverge progressively with the face
> distance to the focus point. But I'm really bad theorizing... I usually
> prove myself wrong when I try things for real.

Cool, I'll have to eventually try it. I'm not really pleased with the 
time it takes to generate the meshes, but some extra time parsing might 
be worth it.

There's also an extension of that idea for rendering motion blur in one 
step (or two, if the textures are baked for a speed increase). Back when 
I was playing with real time raytracing in POV, I resorted to creating 
multiple copies of the entire scene in 3D space. Since you are only 
allowed to move the camera with RTR, I just moved the camera from one 
scene instance to the next. Something similar can be used for camera 
mesh motion blur, where the changing scene is copied and rendered using 
the mesh camera. I'm worried that I'd use up too much RAM, though...

Sam

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