Forget focal blur.  I'd like POV to output files in this thing's format.

http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/lytro-the-camera-that-could-change-photography-forever/

By capturing more information from the scene, pictures taken with a Lytro camera
allow you to adjust the focus after the picture has been taken.  The bottom of
the page linked above has some picttures you can try it out yourself with.

While I'm certain the above pictures were cherry picked to show this capability
in its best light, I'm very excited about seeing how it works once consumer
models ship.

....Chambers

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On 6/22/2011 6:42 PM, Chambers wrote:
> Forget focal blur.  I'd like POV to output files in this thing's format.
>
>
http://www.digitaltrends.com/photography/lytro-the-camera-that-could-change-photography-forever/
>
> By capturing more information from the scene, pictures taken with a Lytro camera
> allow you to adjust the focus after the picture has been taken.  The bottom of
> the page linked above has some picttures you can try it out yourself with.
>
> While I'm certain the above pictures were cherry picked to show this capability
> in its best light, I'm very excited about seeing how it works once consumer
> models ship.
>

Note that if this camera uses techniques anything like what's been 
around in the graphics research community for a while now, you'll pay a 
hefty price in terms of lower resolution for the ability to change focus 
after the fact.  Given that current cameras are beginning to capture 
images in much higher resolution than most people view them maybe this 
is an okay tradeoff.  The hype in the linked article is a bit over the 
top though IMHO.

Also, it shouldn't be too hard at all to get povray to output into a 
format you can do this with, although writing the viewer would probably 
be a tad trickier (but still probably not too hard, although it's been a 
while since I've looked at this sort of stuff).

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Kevin Wampler <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> Also, it shouldn't be too hard at all to get povray to output into a
> format you can do this with, although writing the viewer would probably
> be a tad trickier (but still probably not too hard, although it's been a
> while since I've looked at this sort of stuff).

It all depends... if the demo on the story was indeed a live version of the
viewer, then I would imagine a standalone version would be available when the
camera ships.

Of course, something tells me they faked it for the story.  I didn't bother
examining it too closely.

---Chambers

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Kevin Wampler <wam### [at] uwashingtonedu> wrote:
> Also, it shouldn't be too hard at all to get povray to output into a 
> format you can do this with

  Just output the depth and surface normal information for each pixel
(besides the regular pixel color information, in HDRI resolution for
extra oomph, of course) and you can do a lot of postprocessing with it.

  (In fact, if this information would be output for each recursion level
instead of just the first one, the possibilities would increas, as it
would allow more accurate post-processed focal blurring of reflections,
refractions, etc.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 23/06/2011 02:42 AM, Chambers wrote:

> By capturing more information from the scene, pictures taken with a Lytro camera
> allow you to adjust the focus after the picture has been taken.

I heard about that technology years ago. (It may even have been on 
Tomorrow's World.) Not particularly interesting to me, because I usually 
just want *everything* to be in focus - which it usually is.

I'll get excited when they release a holographic camera. (Which, I would 
like to point out, is *totally* plausible.)

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Am 23.06.2011 05:09, schrieb Chambers:

> It all depends... if the demo on the story was indeed a live version of the
> viewer, then I would imagine a standalone version would be available when the
> camera ships.
>
> Of course, something tells me they faked it for the story.  I didn't bother
> examining it too closely.

There is indeed no fluent transition from foreground to background; 
looks like a set of precomputed images to me, with clickable regions 
bringing up the best fit of the set.

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Am 23.06.2011 03:42, schrieb Chambers:
> Forget focal blur.  I'd like POV to output files in this thing's format.

Note that the render time would probably be the same as running a focal 
blur render multiple times with different focal points (presuming you 
save photons and radiosity data for re-use).

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On 6/22/2011 11:45 PM, Warp wrote:
> Kevin Wampler<wam### [at] uwashingtonedu>  wrote:
>> Also, it shouldn't be too hard at all to get povray to output into a
>> format you can do this with
>
>    Just output the depth and surface normal information for each pixel
> (besides the regular pixel color information, in HDRI resolution for
> extra oomph, of course) and you can do a lot of postprocessing with it.
>
>    (In fact, if this information would be output for each recursion level
> instead of just the first one, the possibilities would increas, as it
> would allow more accurate post-processed focal blurring of reflections,
> refractions, etc.)
>

This would of course work as a quick hack in some cases, but I'd imagine 
it'd have difficulty near death discontinuities, particularly for scenes 
like looking through nearby grass at a distant background where depth 
discontinuities are everywhere.  I'm sure it's solvable in a 
good-enough-for-most-scenes sense though.

In any case, I suspect that the camera itself works through an entirely 
different technique called light field photography (or plenoptic 
photography).  Instead of me describing it you can read about it here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenoptic_camera  This sort of thing should 
be downright trivial to do in povray, although render times would be high.

As a side note, I have occasionally though it would be really useful to 
get a really rich image representation such as you describe form povray. 
  Particularly since it seems like you should be able to do thing like 
change some of the material parameters of objects and some things about 
lighting and see results in real time if you had a good image 
description like that.

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Am 23.06.2011 18:41, schrieb Kevin Wampler:

> In any case, I suspect that the camera itself works through an entirely
> different technique called light field photography (or plenoptic
> photography). Instead of me describing it you can read about it here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenoptic_camera This sort of thing should
> be downright trivial to do in povray, although render times would be high.

According to the thesis by the company's CEO, that's exactly what they do.

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Invisible escreveu:
> On 23/06/2011 02:42 AM, Chambers wrote:
> 
>> By capturing more information from the scene, pictures taken with a 
>> Lytro camera
>> allow you to adjust the focus after the picture has been taken.
> 
> I heard about that technology years ago. (It may even have been on 
> Tomorrow's World.) Not particularly interesting to me, because I usually 
> just want *everything* to be in focus - which it usually is.
> 
> I'll get excited when they release a holographic camera. (Which, I would 
> like to point out, is *totally* plausible.)

yes, holography is exactly what I thought of (the "light from all 
directions" concept).

Of course, holography and this focal-changing one demands a proper 
viewer too, possibly even more expensive, limited and cumbersome than 
the simple 2-frames stereographic ones they're trying and failing so 
hard to sell today.


-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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