Hello,
   Yet another demo scene I originally hadn't planned on posting here. 
However it was fun to make.  Also it was frustrating to render, due to 
antialiasing.  The jaggies on the reflections on the left side just 
wouldn't go away.  I'm aware of the issues with bright colors, but even 
focal blur didn't do much.

The attached image was rendered with very aggressive focal blur 
settings.  Probably way out there, but could the handle being a mesh 
make a difference?  I imagine there may be nothing that can be done, but 
any ideas, or feedback on the image itself for that matter, are always 
welcome.

-- 
-The Mildly Infamous Blue Herring

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'zchars.png' (254 KB)

Preview of image 'zchars.png'

>   Yet another demo scene I originally hadn't planned on posting here.
> However it was fun to make.  Also it was frustrating to render, due to
> antialiasing.  The jaggies on the reflections on the left side just
> wouldn't go away.  I'm aware of the issues with bright colors, but even
> focal blur didn't do much.
>
> The attached image was rendered with very aggressive focal blur
> settings.  Probably way out there, but could the handle being a mesh
> make a difference?  I imagine there may be nothing that can be done, but
> any ideas, or feedback on the image itself for that matter, are always
> welcome.

I don't think you'll see much focal blur while the camera is looking 
straight on at the surface.  Try moving the camera off to the side a bit, so 
that the handle is a different distance from the camera than the paper.  See 
attached image for what I mean.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'image1.jpg' (16 KB)

Preview of image 'image1.jpg'

scott wrote:
> I don't think you'll see much focal blur while the camera is looking 
> straight on at the surface.  Try moving the camera off to the side a 
> bit, so that the handle is a different distance from the camera than the 
> paper.  See attached image for what I mean.

Thanks!  However, I wasn't really after any blur per se, rather I was 
trying to use it as an alternative to standard antialiasing.  With a 
very small aperture and higher quality settings it can transcend the 
standard antialiasing capabilities and produce very smooth images, 
without any actual blurring effect.  Its also much slower of course. 
For this image the settings used were:

  aperture 0.01
  focal_point 0
  blur_samples 512
  confidence 0.98
  variance 0

This would normally be enough to get rid of most aliasing.

You do make a good point however, adjusting to actually get some 
blurring of the handle could be an alternative.

-- 
-The Mildly Infamous Blue Herring

Post a reply to this message

Blue Herring wrote:
> The attached image was rendered with very aggressive focal blur 
> settings.  Probably way out there, but could the handle being a mesh 
> make a difference?  I imagine there may be nothing that can be done, but 
> any ideas, or feedback on the image itself for that matter, are always 
> welcome.

Render it at a larger size (even twice the resolution in each axis 
helps) and scale down using the GIMP :)

...Chambers

Post a reply to this message

> This would normally be enough to get rid of most aliasing.

Try experimenting with making the aperture a little bigger, and/or moving 
the focal point a tiny bit.  IME if the object is perfectly in focus with a 
very small aperture you don't get much anti-aliasing because the camera is 
only sampling a tiny point at the centre of each pixel.  You want the camera 
to sample an area roughly the size of the pixel to get good AA without any 
visible blurring between pixels.

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> Try experimenting with making the aperture a little bigger, and/or 
> moving the focal point a tiny bit.  IME if the object is perfectly in 
> focus with a very small aperture you don't get much anti-aliasing 
> because the camera is only sampling a tiny point at the centre of each 
> pixel.  You want the camera to sample an area roughly the size of the 
> pixel to get good AA without any visible blurring between pixels.

Thanks for the tip, I didn't realize making the aperture too small could 
be a problem.

-- 
-The Mildly Infamous Blue Herring

Post a reply to this message

Chambers wrote:
> Render it at a larger size (even twice the resolution in each axis 
> helps) and scale down using the GIMP :)

Hmm, there's an idea.  Thanks for the help!

-- 
-The Mildly Infamous Blue Herring

Post a reply to this message