Cinemachine VS DepthOfField what is going on here?

Hi everyone, I need your help.

With the depth of field effect from the post processing stack v2 and "focus tracks target" enabled in the Cinemachine Post Processing script I get weird focusing issues.

I posted a video to youtube showing the problem (easier to see it in full screen)

If you look at the objects on the top left and at the one bottom left, you can see the focus going in and out. If we disable "Focus tracks target" in Cinemachine's post processing script it stops. If we disable Cinemachine's brain script on the camera it also stops. Cinemachine's tracked target is the player you see in the scene. We also tried adding a simple cube to the scene and setting it as the target to eliminate the player from the equation, and we get the same result.

Any ideas?

FYI I use the latest version of Cinemachine and the Post processing stack V2. Both installed using the package manager in Unity 2018.4.12f1.

 

BUT WAIT! There is more to this problem.

If I aim the camera in the -X or -Z direction (global coordinates), in addition to the focus problem, the ground's texture is moving! If looking in the +X or +Z it doesn't move.

The ground object is just a default cube with a scale of x1000 y1 z1000 and an albedo texture added to the standard shader.

Here is a video, once again, full screen helps a lot. The movement in the ground texture is subtle but you will see it!

Disabling "Focus tracks target" fixes the DepthOfField's focusing problems but not the ground texture.

Near the end of the video, I disable the "Cinemachine Brain" which fixes the moving texture problem.

How do I fix this?

EDIT

Huh... Strangely disabling the player object also stops the ground from shaking but does nothing for the Depth of field.

 

I will try it right now

EDIT: Done.

It's fixed when CM is disabled, and we use a Global Volume instead.

Here is the video:

 

Here is another test I did:

As the description says, I was investigating if tiny movements in CM's target which induce movement in the camera and CM's vcams is the cause of the DOF focusing issues. Later in the video I replace the target by a sphere that doesn't move and the problem still exists.

 

I found the source of the problem. I added a debug line to see what values the CM Post processing script was dealing with and did a video:

When I pause the game you can see strange values interfering with the distance calculations. It appears the problem is with state.FinalPosition suddenly changing values.

 

Interesting indeed, and you are welcome. It's the least I can do to help resolve this faster.

I'm making the video you asked for, brb.

EDIT: Here a video where I take you for a tour of all the CM scripts and the active cam

 

Just found something else. In your code the focus distance is obtained with:

focusDistance += (state.FinalPosition - state.ReferenceLookAt).magnitude;

Every time the value of state.FinalPosition fluctuates, focusDistance = 110.5474f no matter how zoomed in or out the focus of the DOF is.

In other words, It jumps between the correct value (which changes with the zoom level) and that fixed value of 110.5474f at what almost seems like a regular interval.

 

When you say vcam do you mean the cinemachine freelook camera?

EDIT
From searching the hierarchy the vcams are actually in the top, middle and bottom rig of the freelook camera.

Here are some screenshots of the entire settings:

 

You are correct and at the moment the state came is locked so it will use that freelook cam only.

Screenshots or the state driven cam and the brain are incoming.

 

I would also like to remind you that even if I set a basic sphere as the target I get the same problem. So I doubt it's related to how the player is animated.

FreeLook has no extension loaded.
StateDriven only uses the post processing script.

Here are some screenshots of the post processing script setting:

 

I tested with the target and look at set in the freelook.


Same focus problem.

 

OK I will try that.

 

Ok, just did all that and the problem is gone.

I'ts bypassing the state driven camera that fixed it. Moving the freelook cam out of its parent didn't change a thing.

EDIT: It fixes the DOF focus bug but the ground is still shaking unless I disable Cinemachine's brain.

 

Yes, I will try to make a stripped down version of our setup. How should I submit it?

 

That took some major stripping... I sent you a message with a download link.

 

No problem, glad I could help and thank you for looking into it this quickly.

Not sure If we need Standby Update but if anyone does , another temporary fix is to filter the value in CinemachinePostProcessing.cs by caching the focusDistance and compare against the bad value. (which for me was always 110.5474f YMMV)


Above "PostPipelineStageCallback" add previousFocusDistance

Code (CSharp):

1. float previousFocusDistance;
2. protected override void PostPipelineStageCallback(

Several lines of codes lower were focusDistance is set change things as follow:

Code (CSharp):

1. if (Mathf.Approximately(focusDistance, 110.5474f)) {
2.     focusDistance = previousFocusDistance;
3. } else {
4.     previousFocusDistance = focusDistance;
5. }

 

I just tried it and the bug is still there for me when I do that. I set it to "Never" in every cam I could.

EDIT
Actually, in the scene that I sent you it DOES fix the problem but not in my game. Wow... Going back to the stripping board.

 

I have figured out why your fix wasn't working for me. One of the Freelook cam was bugged.
It was set to never update but apparently it didn't agree. I had to set it to always and then to never , again, to fix it.

Just fixed it 3 times in a row in different builds just to confirm it was just that.

I still have the bug with the ground shaking. Its kind of weird, when the target is a sphere, it shakes when we rotate the view and ends when the rotation is finished.

If I have the player as cinemachine's target it settles a little when the rotation is over but it never stops like with the sphere.

Once again, disabling cinemachin's brain fixes everything.

 

@Gregoryl Hope you are still around,

I cornered the bug as much as I could. I attached 2 videos bellow.

One of them has the player as the Cinemachine target, the other one has a sphere.

I tested several things here's what I found out:

• In both video you can see the ground texture shaking. Only seems to happen when looking in the direction of negative X and Z in world coordinates.
• When having the sphere as a target the shaking occurs but when the camera stops moving it settles after a few seconds (until you move the cam again)
• It never settles when targeting the player
• Removing the Rigid Body on the player partly fixes the problem, still shakes when rotating
• Disabling the player's animator partly fixes the problem, still shakes when rotating
• Disabling "Apply Root Motion" on the player animator partly fixes the problem, still shakes when rotating
• Disabling Cinemachine's brain fixes the problem
• Using a normal camera fixes the problem
• Reducing the Tiling of the ground texture from 10000x10000 to 1000x1000 fixes the problem when using Cinemachine, not required with a normal cam

Player as the target

Sphere as the target

I'm not sure what's going here. Lots of things appear interconnected. I was thinking it could be a bug with the huge tiling but I don't know anymore. And why the hell only in the negative X and Z? Also, At once point I had changed the scale of the ground to something like 100x100 and the tiling to 1000x1000 and strangely enough it's as if the shaking was suddenly limited to a smaller "10x10 or 15x15" square around the player But that happened only once, and I was unable to reproduce it.

Please help me resolve this one.
Thank you.

 

Hello Sorry I wasn't around,

I'm going to test this and let you know.

 

I'm currently upgrading to version 2.40 preview 9 via the package manager. I will let you know what's going on shortly.

BTW, I was looking at the docs for a section on best practices when upgrading CM but there was nothing, so I'm erasing CM from an empty scene and reinstalling it from there. If this is wrong please let me know.

 

@Gregoryl It's not working. I can't get in play mode since upgrading to 2.4, my project is stuck on the following error:

Assembly has reference to non-existent assembly 'Unity.Timeline' (Packages/com.unity.cinemachine/Editor/com.unity.cinemachine.Editor.asmdef)

I haven't done anything with assembly definition files in my project so I'm not sure what to do about this.
Additionally, even though I can't get into play mode anymore, I can see the depth of field trying to focus non stop in the scene view and game cam.

I would say its not fixed but I would like to confirm in play mode.

 

Wow there are many errors about Unity.Recorder.Editor being in conflict with CM types.

The type 'CinemachineVirtualCameraBase' in 'f:\Unity Projects\ALPHA\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.cinemachine@2.4.0-preview.9\Runtime\Core\CinemachineVirtualCameraBase.cs' conflicts with the imported type 'CinemachineVirtualCameraBase' in 'Unity.Recorder.Editor, Version=0.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. Using the type defined in 'f:\Unity Projects\ALPHA\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.cinemachine@2.4.0-preview.9\Runtime\Core\CinemachineVirtualCameraBase.cs'. [Assembly-CSharp]csharp(CS0436)
Peek Problem


I think the recorder version I have may be from the store as the package manager wont allow uninstall it. I will replace it with the package manager version.

 

I removed Recorder (which I wasn't using anyways) reinstalled CM through the package manager and now it won't even install properly. I get a ton of errors as show below for pretty much all the CM scripts that matter:

Script 'Packages/com.unity.cinemachine/Runtime/PostProcessing/CinemachineVolumeSettings.cs' will not be compiled because it exists outside the Assets folder and does not to belong to any assembly definition file.
UnityEditor.Scripting.ScriptCompilation.EditorCompilationInterface:TickCompilationPipeline(EditorScriptCompilationOptions, BuildTargetGroup, BuildTarget)

 

Uninstall the package AGAIN and reinstall it, now I get these errors:

Assembly has reference to non-existent assembly 'Unity.Timeline' (Packages/com.unity.cinemachine/Runtime/com.unity.cinemachine.asmdef)

Assembly has reference to non-existent assembly 'Unity.Timeline' (Packages/com.unity.cinemachine/Editor/com.unity.cinemachine.Editor.asmdef)

 

More errors:

[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.Timeline'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.Timeline.Editor'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.RenderPipelines.Core.Runtime'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.RenderPipelines.Core.Editor'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.RenderPipelines.HighDefinition.Runtime'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.RenderPipelines.HighDefinition.Editor'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.ugui'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.RenderPipelines.Universal.Runtime'
[Exception] AssemblyDefinitionException: Could not find assembly reference 'Unity.RenderPipelines.Universal.Editor'


.......

 

OK I will upgrade I was at 2018.4.12f1

Also, fyi, I dont know if this is normal but in preview 9 (only one i tested) CinemachinePostProcessingEditor.cs and CinemachinePostProcessing.cs are allready included. I thought you were suposed to import the Post processing adapter to get those (from the cinemachine menu)

When I tried to import it from the menu (fater installing cm 2.4) it showed those files were different:


I ran a diff on them and there are indeed a few differences. Which one is the right version?

 

No I hadn't but its already installed, I am upgrading the project as we speak.

Then we have to wait 20 mins for the Collaborate to do its... thing. If you've ever seen "Final Space" on Netflix... Collab is my Kvn.

 

OMG so I get this now:

error CS1644:
Feature `out variable declaration' cannot be used because it is not part of the C# 4.0 language specification

 

[CompilerError] error CS1644:
Feature `out variable declaration' cannot be used because it is not part of the C# 4.0 language specification
Compiler Error at F:/Unity Projects/ALPHA/Library/PackageCache/com.unity.cinemachine@2.4.0-preview.9/Runtime/Components/CinemachineTransposer.cs:166 column 42

 

I fixed it with:

Vector3 pos;
Quaternion orient;
TrackTarget(deltaTime, curState.ReferenceUp, offset, out pos, out orient);

It's compiling, will see.
And now its re importing everything in the project.... OMG this is going to take forever.