[RELEASED] Deckard Render - Cinematographic Renderer for Unity

Okay, I've fixed it.
The problem was in the model's hierarchy.
Thanks anyway. The asset is great.

 

Thanks for the tip!
I was reading the Deckard manual and discovered some great links to third party assets:
1) Light Shafts - I am using Hx volumetric Light from HITBOX Team, do I need to explore Light Shafts as my volumetric light choice?
2) SSMS - absolutely love the scattering fog!
3) SEGI - Are you suggesting to use this GI instead of internal Realtime GI in Lighting Tab? Looks identical to me

 

-HX is superb, I'm also using mostly HX. Light Shafts is ok for users that don't want to pay for volumetrics.
-Realtime GI is faster, but SEGI is realtime and suited for dynamic scenes. Realtime GI isn't good if you have moving objects.

 

I'm using 2019.3.6f1 and it doesn't work on an existing project. I installed on a new 3D project along with Post Processing Stack v1.04 and opened the demo scene. When I click "Render Animation" it creates a folder with images and an mp4 file but all of the images and the resulting video are just black screens. When I click on the game tab, the view is jittering and the Deckard View window has a blue progress bar that keeps going from 0 to 100% which seems to correlate with the jittering effect. I then created a new Universal Project and after updating all the project materials, it then would create a 4 sec video in the demo scene although the cubes and spheres were still pink due to material issue.

Can you let me know why this doesn't work in an existing project and doesn't work in the base 3D project? I wasn't sure if there was some setup we need to do.

Thanks,
Reggie

 

Check that you are using latest Deckard form assetstore. Previous version had a problem with a demo scene.

 

Oli - firstly, Deckard looks incredible, thankyou! Especially the DOF and cinema camera controls/colourspaces. Could you tell me:

- are you able to share your Book of the Dead hack? I've tried briefly importing Deckard into BOTD on Unity 2018.3.11 (version that runs Book of the Dead well normally). But confused how I can add Deckard into this project, perhaps understandable considering the complexity of this project's HDRP/exposure post processing etc... However it would be a great way to get to see what Deckard can do.

 

You have to open Deckard View tobe able to see results.

 

I'm showing I have the latest version. I did just purchase it during the sale so unless it was updated since then, I don't think I'm on an old version. Is there a version number in the project anywhere?

 

It was updated one week ago..

 

I've often have odd issues were things in deckard "feel off" or don't quite work if installing a new version of Deckard.
Just delete the whole "DeckardRender" folder in the Asset directory and re-install fresh. Works for me 99% of the time!
Then restart Unity and see if that helps.

 

I wille take all those nice thoughts in consideration.

 

Thanks but it was happening with a fresh install. It seems like I somehow had the correct version of Deckard but the project had an old version. I think I updated the asset while in another project but didn't upgrade the project in the one i was testing with. After deleting and re-installing, the demo scene was working. I haven't had a chance to test with anything other than the demo scene yet though.

 

Hi everybody, I have finally a relatively good internet connection and set up some multicamera systems for streaming, so I'm planing on doing some live video streams next week, on youtube, dedicated to questions and answers about Deckard.
Any suggestions for a time that could be approachable to everyone? (Im in CET time zone)

 

Any videos would be fab! A general intro tutorial from a film-maker / cinematographer point of view would be super cool... ideally with a fairly realistic downloadable demo scene - but maybe I ask a lot! haha

 

I will be doing live streaming with Q@A this thursday (21 may) at 5.00pm Central European Time (it's 11.00AM EST (New York) time, and 8.00am PDT (San Francisco) time).
Here is a link where you can watch this stream and ask your questions:

 

Deckard for Unity Q&A Livestream is about to start, I will be answering questions about Deckard For Unity

 

Hello，I have a problem.
I try it in my 2019.3.05f Unity with HDRP。I use the lastest version of deckard render.
I open Deckard render view and in edit mode, anyting seems work fine.


Howerver，When I click "Render Animation" it creates a folder with images and an mp4 file but all of the images and the resulting video are just black screens.
After I quit the play mode.
The Deckard Preocess compont will be "uncheck",and it will show up a error

"
NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
DeckardPreprocess.OnDestroy () (at Assets/DeckardRender/Scripts/DeckardPreprocess.cs:50)
"

And the game view display :NO DISPLAY

I have to remove all Deckard render Compoment and add it again tohave my game view back.
Please help.

 

I really need more info on your rendering settings. Black view usually means that you don't have enough Vram for certain resolutions or some image effects going nuts because of too large resolution.
BTW, what happens if you close and reopen Deckard view. Or if you try to reactivate deckard component?

 

Thank you for you replay.
I test in two computer ，my computer with 16G Vam and GTX1070，and my friends is better.Both end up with black screen.
The project is really larege,but i can play it in 24fps without deckard .
And I test this project with the older version Deckard ,It worked well before.


I can remove deckard component and add it again, the deckard view will show normal again.
But i JUST cant render.

When I first time add deckard component
It shows up
"
transform.position assign attempt for 'Camera' is not valid. Input position is { NaN, NaN, NaN }.
UnityEngine.Transform:Translate(Vector3, Space)
DeckardRender.DeckardRender:OptimizedRendering() (at Assets/DeckardRender/Scripts/DeckardRender.cs:1438)
DeckardRender.DeckardRender:LateUpdate() (at Assets/DeckardRender/Scripts/DeckardRender.cs:869)
"

I try to do a screen shot .And show up a error in the pic below


But when i test it in a cube simple scene ,it can render without problem.

 

I just find more warning message,may be can help?

 

The screen shot after I enter render animation mode and end up wiht blackscreen.

 

I test it with only 192*108 ,and it fail .

 

You've said that this happens after updating and this is a know issue when updating. Before update, delete Deckard folder.. then do a new update.. also, you will have to delete scripts from your camera, and re-add them. Then everything will work correctly.

 

I get black frames rendered often if I do not first go back and select the "scene view" before clicking "render animation".

 

Be sure that Deckard requires Scene View (opened and visible) and Game view exist. And always turn off Maximize on play for a scene view.

 

I have do it again and again, I am sure I do a clear update.

the key problem is
"
transform.position assign attempt for 'Camera' is not valid. Input position is { NaN, NaN, NaN }.
UnityEngine.Transform:Translate(Vector3, Space)
DeckardRender.DeckardRender:OptimizedRendering() (at Assets/DeckardRender/Scripts/DeckardRender.cs:1438)
DeckardRender.DeckardRender:LateUpdate() (at Assets/DeckardRender/Scripts/DeckardRender.cs:869)
"

It seems like the Deckard do not get a Camera position.
I don't know how to fix it.

 

I also get all black frames when rendering. The image in Deckard viewer is gorgeous but can’t get any images out. Any more suggestions?

Can’t believe how good the image looks in the viewer now though... great job.

 

Please give me some more info on unity version or anything that can be important. Does this happens also with demo scene? Are you sure that you have opened scene view and game view in unity?

 

What unity version are you using? From what you are saying, it looks like you are using old versione of Deckard.

 

2019.3.13f1 Personal. I purchased Deckard on May 9th so it should be up to date. I just tested an export from the demo scene and it worked (video looks good, pngs are about 90% transparent). What should I be looking at in my scene that could prevent it from rendering an image? I only have a GTX1050 TI? Are there settings to compensate for a lesser video card?

 

Nevermind! After I did a test export from the demo scene I went back to my scene and it worked! It was a long render time (about 4 hours for a minute on my 1050 ti) but the results are phenomenal... This is the biggest leap in “graphic realism” I’ve made in my filmmaking with Unity journey (not really making games). Incredible asset. Definitely happy with the purchase.

Two things I’m curious about now that I’ve made my first render...

A) I had a video playing as a texture on a solid and it did not play. A static image from the video stayed on the surface. Is this to be expected?

B) I have some artifacts in the dark blacks. I also had a really saturated red light that was creating similar artifacts that I swapped out but I didn’t see these in the Deckard viewer. Is this just clipping or is there something else I should look at? Example photo attached.

Thanks for building this thing and bearing with me while I stumble through how to use it.

 

I am Using 2019.3.05f，and I also test it on 2019.3.13，both fail.

I am download it from the package manager ,version is 2.0.5b.

 

One more thing
I try to open a new project ,and it can render.
However,the error is still here.
And everytime it finish the render ,the preprocess compoment will be auto deselect

 

You have to use Video Scrubber component and put it on your video component. Then you can use timeline to drive it. (you have to assign timeline and VideoPlayer components). This script will also let you preview your video while scrubbing timeline.

"B) I have some artifacts in the dark blacks. I also had a really saturated red light that was creating similar artifacts that I swapped out but I didn’t see these in the Deckard viewer. Is this just clipping or is there something else I should look at? Example photo attached."
Are you using some other image effects that could produce this noise? For example, a Noise in PPS? If you are, turn it off,a nd use Deckards built in Noise. If you are using it's built in noise, then turn it down to zero, and see if this artifact still happens.

This means that for some reason, on other projects is still installed old version. Try this: in a project that isn't functioning, delete whole DeckardRender folder.. and import it from your new project by copy-pasting folder. This might solve your issue.

Ops.. I will try to fix this issue - but if this happens, just click on Open Deckard View and it will come back as it was. BTW, if you are using HDRP, then the preprocess script will be deactivated always.

 

“This means that for some reason, on other projects is still installed old version. Try this: in a project that isn't functioning, delete whole DeckardRender folder.. and import it from your new project by copy-pasting folder. This might solve your issue.”

So you mean I have to find out every Project I had uesd，and delete all the older version Deckard Render? I think there may be some of my other project had used older version .
I test it with my friend who never use Deckard and they can render ,so maybe this is the problem.


Ops.. I will try to fix this issue - but if this happens, just click on Open Deckard View and it will come back as it was. BTW, if you are using HDRP, then the preprocess script will be deactivated always.

Yes ,I am Using HDRP. So everytime I have to re active it.

 

I am using Unity 2019.3.05f
I have a character walking animation
The character is floating on the ground.
I did try you way in the docs.
But it is still floating.....

 

No, you have to keep it deactivated (DeckardPreProcess). It is being used only for standard pipline and not on HDRP.

 

Sorry, do you have any video? I don't quite understand what do you mean by "floating"

 

For those of you who have missed my livestream about new features in Deckard, you can find here a recording of last stream.
Next stream will be this friday, so be sure to tune in on youtube and ask some quesrions:

 

here is the video

I did try you way in the docs.
I change the root bone to the same hip
however the character animation still have problems.
Do you know any solution?thank you

 

From what I see, you have elements of character mesh that are parents of another elements of your character. This is probably what causes your issues.

 

I will be doing my second live stream about Deckard for Unity where you can ask your questions live.

 

HI，I am doing antoher test with a character in mixamo.com

This Character have only one mesh。

I do the test again，however，it doesn't work.

I don't know whats wrong.

I think most users who use this plugin may need to render character animations.

I wonder if you can do a example in your live stream about how to render an animation with a character correctly,that will be very helpful!！

Thank you！

I download the character here if you need.
https://www.mixamo.com/#/?page=2&type=Character

 

Thank you your live stream ,but you didn't render it on live stream.
Maybe you can do a render test and see the result..
I use 2019.3 and fail...
So Maybe Unity did't fix the bug...?

 

I have tried that character, and actually, I get a same problems as you described. So looks like this bug is still present in some other way.
Fortunately, I have find a fix. Problem is still in a root bone object. Steps to fix this issue:
-create an empty object in a root of your scene. Name it something like "AvatarsRoot"
-Go to your character, find all of your Skinned Meshes components and select them
-In a root bone field, set that your root bone is your empty game object (in this case "AvatarsRoot"). You will probably see your avatar disappearing from a screen.
-Now in Skinned Mesh Renderer, select a field "Update when Offscreen" to On.
Now all your characters should behave correctly. (BTW, don't move your "AvatarsRoot" object with any animation or script).

As I understand, there is a bug in Unity that adds sporadically transform movement to any skinned object, instead of calculating only skinned mesh local transformation. And sometime Skin mesh movement wins over transfrom movement, while other times it is a Renderer itself that wins over Skin Mesh. And this results in wrong mesh positions and jittering. By setting Root mesh to be a non movable object, we are actually bypassing this issue. But as root bone serves for optimization purposes, so that engine can know if our character is on screen or if it isn't, then we can ovverride it's purpose by selecting Update when offscreen.
Wow, this was a tought to debug, but atleast, now we have a final solution. I might even add an automation script directly in Deckard. (I just want to know before if it breaks something else, but from short tests that I've made, it probably shouldn't)
p. s. Looks like I will have to update my documentation with new findings.

 

Wow，thank you very much!
I will do a test !
It will be very nice to get it done !

 

I do a simple test,and it work!

I will do a full check with a complex tomorrow to see if there are any problems..

 

One more thing about motion blur and timeline rendering.
Please see the video.

Our shots are organized in this way. Each shot is an independent Timeline playable director.
Multiple shots make up the entire movie.
But when rendering.
The camera's motion blur will appear in the first 2 frames of the lens.
It's like the camera and the character suddenly move to where they should be.
This issue was discussed with you in the live broadcast before.
At the time, you suggested that we render a certain shot separately.
As shown in the video, our "shot002" shot starts at 420 frames, that is, 420 frames already belong to "shot002".
Therefore, we set to start rendering from 420 frames in the rendering settings.
However, the result of the actual rendering is that it starts rendering from 419 frames.
And 419 420 frames still belong to the content of the previous shot.
A very large motion blur appeared in frame 421
Only 422 frames are restored to the normal "shot002" animation.
Therefore, in this way, we lost at least 2 frames of animation.
Do you have any suggestions?

PS，this forum only support 4MB rar file...It is very hard to export a viedo to such small,any other way to send you example file?This time I export a h265 file.

 

@olix4242
I think I finally found the conditions for repeating at least my issues with the BLACK RENDER bug.
I was fine and had no issues until - suddenly I lost hours trying to get renders working instead of black frames.

[FOR THOSE READING AND TRYING TO RENDER TO PNG's]
PNG's rendering black is normal - just interpret the footage in After Effects without Alpha (straight)
Unless of course you have my issue below and ALSO render to PNG... Black render issue on top of Black PNG quirk!? Haha... I feel for you!

So I thought, lets try slow and methodical - Our project was committed to the Deckard style - So I had to solve this.

However a caveat... at the same time... if I went back to certain older scenes... it would work! No black frames!
And even then... in those older scenes it still seemed important to ensure gameview is firstly open, and to select scene view just before rendering to get the camera view to render colour and motion... hmmm strange hey?

But back to my problem...

I then tried starting with a Deckard scene that was already working and saving them as a new scenes.
But even a re-saved scene immediately stopped working and would render black frames!

I thought well I'll make a list and try:

• maybe selecting Game view 1st, then Scene view last? no
  
• switching the Deckard camera components on/off. no
• deleting/re-adding them. no
• using fresh cameras. no
• re-using timelines that work. no
• using original output folders vs external folders. no
• tried reducing or increasing Batch groups vs Editor quality. no
  
• trying cameras set to different displays. no

ALL black frames. And no Errors.
I am using a new PC with 2080 RTX so it shouldn't have been memory!
Tried deleting everything in my scene. No Still black!
The Deckard view would show the preview I wanted...and it was updating the blue bar really fast... but when I click render... black frames!

I then hit another issue. Not sure if its related...

I could not drag a cloned Deckard camera into the timeline unless I deleted the existing "animator" component and then manually re-added it from inside timeline.
Timeline would not let me drag a Deckard camera into the timeline even if it had a working Animator component on it... that had previously worked in previous scene!

So I began closing all the different Unity windows in different orders - I'd seen a few mentions here for other things similar.

Finally the combination that worked for me:
(This seems to be only for switching or creating or re-saving new scenes using deckard)
1. Each time you switch scenes - Close all views (scene, game and deckard)
2. Re-open and Select them in order of 1. Game view, 2. Scene view, 3. Deckard view.
3. Select Deckard Camera - Render Animation!

Simple right!??
Feels like a conflict of order or priority?
Oliver is it possible to Fix this?

This will be common to many users - especially if things work initially but suddenly begin to render black later depending on their workflow? NEW SCENES USING EXISITNG DECKARD CAMERAS.
My fix becomes very time consuming over dozens and dozens of scenes and shots.

It would also confuse new people just starting out with Deckard to solve on your own!
Hopefully this helps someone!
Cheers.

 

I would like to solve this issue, but I'm pretty unable to replicate it. I can only replicate this issue when I don't have a Scene view opened. Can you give me some more info: what Unity version are you using? Are you usign HDRP or a standard pipeline? Can you post Deckard Render settings (I need mostly settings in a Render Quality and Animation/timeline dropdowns. Also, do you start rendering by clicking Render Animation on Deckard Render or by clicking play in Unity editor?