[RELEASED] Deckard Render - Cinematographic Renderer for Unity

Ok, try this one. Find this line in DeckardRender.cs script:

Code (CSharp):

1.  public void SkinMotionBlur()
2.         {
3.             if (timeline != null && UnityEditor.EditorApplication.isPlaying && cinemachineCut == false)
4.             {
5.                 timeline.time = Time.time - Shader.GetGlobalVector("_DeckardTime").y + (float)timeline.initialTime;
6.                 float tt = Time.time + Shader.GetGlobalVector("_DeckardTime").y + (float)timeline.initialTime;
7.                 //     print("Time" + Time.time + Shader.GetGlobalVector("_DeckardTime").y + timeline.initialTime + );
8.             }

and change line:

Code (CSharp):

1. timeline.time = Time.time - Shader.GetGlobalVector("_DeckardTime").y + (float)timeline.initialTime;

to:

Code (CSharp):

1. timeline.time = Time.time + Shader.GetGlobalVector("_DeckardTime").y + (float)timeline.initialTime;

It is just changing one minus to plus. I even don't know why i kept this minus instead of plus. It was made for first vesions of deckard that had to interpolate values from the past frames. But with timeline workflow implementation, we can look into the future frames, so this isn't needed and shouldn't be there. Thanks for pointing out this issue.

 

Hi mate! Thanks soo much for looking into this!!

We are using HDRP 7.3.1 - Its been working wonderfully!
We are also in Unity 2019.3.7f1
We always start rendering by clicking "Render Animation" - we did also try using the "Play" button in Unity - same result.
Our work requires we re-save / duplicate scenes a lot and make variations.

Settings attached showing Render Quality and Animation/Timeline.

 

Hmmm so the Black frames rendering has returned again... this time my old fix did not work!
(closing all views and opening again in set order)

I've narrowed it down somewhat to simply copying the Deckard Render Component values I want to keep, Manually adding a new Deckard Render Component and then simply pasting the values back on to the new component and selecting Scene view first before clicking Render Aniamtion in Deckard.

This works for me. No black frames!

I have also tried the fix on two different computers with different specs - same problem - and fix works on both my computers!
So very odd.

Its as though Deckard Render View won't recognise the new scene I'm in with a new camera when it already has a Deckard Camera I was using before - and until I "create a new Deckard camera" and paste the old Deckard values back on to it... then it works.

 

I think that I was finally been able to reproduce this problem. Can you confirm this statement: this issue happens if you have more than one Deckard Render camera in your scene (even deactivated).
Is this correct?
If you delete all adittional Deckard Render cameras, this issue disappears?

 

Ok, here is a patch that should fix this issue when using two deckard cameras in a same scene. Can you test and confirm if it's working for you?

Forget about previous workaround that I have posted. I've found out that it removes motion blur in some cases. Fortunately, I've found some undocumented function in Unity that can be used to fix this issue completely, so that there is no any (known) limit on setting root bones. I have included this also in this new patch. So be sure to download and import by overwriting original scripts.

 

hi,I am feizhouji. I am using another account to log in this fourm.

So you mean with this 2.0.9 update ,we dont have to change the root bone of our character?

 

I am going to test it.
Will give you feedback soon.

 

Yes. No more fiddling with bones. Atleast, from my own tests that I've done.

 

No,I test it with your updatepackage.
NOT Working.

Please See the video I upload.
the character foot is sitll wiggle when walking.

 

One more test
I change the root bone with the last way we succeed,
Howerver,this time changing the root bone setting did't help.
It sitll wiggle after I change all the mesh root bone to a new gameobject(in root )

 

Strange. I'm not sure, but I see that you are using HDRP renbdering. It might be that HDRP rendering has some issues with this functionality. Can you please send me your avatar model in private message?

 

Did some tests with latest unity, and I can confirm that while my solution works in unity 2019.1 it doesn't work in Unity 2019.3. Looks like there is a bug in unity 2019.3.. and I have submitted a bug report to Unity. I hope that they will fix this issue soon.
EDIT: FORGET THIS! It's my bad, I forgot to add Timeline to my Deckard.

 

I sent you the file in private message,please check it.thank you.

But I don't think it is my models problem,because in the last version ,I can fix the problem with " changing root bone "

 

hmmm you remind me as well. Possibly this may have been part of my problem but certianly not always the problem.

Perhaps once saving an old scene as a new one with existing Deckard cameras, or copying/importing an existing Deckard camera into a new or existing scene, then maybe Decakrd could generate a one-time "alert" for new users who do not know they need to assign a Timeline in Deckard??

Although I wouldn't want the alert to stop any automated rendering of queued Deckard scenes...

 

I have added some automatic behaviour that will search for existing active timeline in a scene, and assign it automatically if user didn't provide any timeline. This should be a good fix as it will also eliminate a need to manually asign timeline. I have also added some automation for lights: some users don't bother to add Deckard Soft light to all lights, so now, Deckard will add them to all realtime lights in a phase of rendering - resulting in a better shadows quality.

 

News on a black rendering bug:
I have been able to pinpoint this issue with a help of one of our cutomers experiencing this problem. Apparently, it is a bug in Unity Editor that happens in unknown cases. Solution to this problem is to reset editor windows layout by loading one of the default layouts (Window > 2 by 3)

 

1. I test it. However ,it seems nothing happend after changing this .The motion blur bug is still there. And the render output is the same as the last one.

2. The main problem is there are wrong motion blur between different shot. The first 2 frames will be very blur...
emm,So I want to know how your plugin calculates motion blur?
Where is the script about "motion blur" , I want to check it to see how it works and find any solutions.

3.I find you have some code to find out different Vcam,but you blocked this line of code.I try to open it but it didn't work either.

 

Let's summarize the problems.

Problem1: When switching between different shots, "interpolation errors" appear in the motion blur of the camera and the character.

Problem2: Select (resume from frame) in the plug-in. When you enter 420 frame, it will start rendering from 419.

My first test:
In my project, I want to render shot002.
In my timeline, Shot002 starts at 420 frames.
So I enter 420 in (resume from frame).
It starts rendering from frame 419.
Ok, I ignore this frame 419.
And as I mentioned before, both 420 frames and 421 will produce incorrect motion blur.

Note: There are two types of motion blur, camera motion blur, and character motion blur. These two seem to be motion blur calculated with two algorithms.

-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- -
Last time, you asked me to modify one of the code.
I tested it, but it seems to have no effect.
Pic1.

-------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------

My second test:
I found that there is some code in your code for judging whether "shots are cut".
But you don't seem to enable these codes.
I enabled these codes directly, but no effect.
-------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------

I found that the reason why Vcam produces motion blur is that when calculating motion blur, it extracts the information of the previous frame. However, because the shot has been switched, the information of the previous frame belongs to the previous shot, so incorrect motion blur will be generated.

Therefore, I added some code. as shown in picture 2. On the right is my revised code.
I do some change on
private void BruteForceRendering()

When judging that it is currently the first frame of a new shot, I force the camera to retrieve the position coordinates of the current frame when calculating motion blur.
You may have a clearer concept by looking at the code. I attached the Cs file.
Through this method, I successfully made the camera no longer produce unnecessary motion blur when switching lenses.
However, I did not solve the problem of the character's motion blur.
In the rendered picture,
At 420 frame，camera remained stable, without motion blur.But the character is still in the position of the last shot.
At 421 frames, the character moves, and a huge erroneous motion blur is produced.
At 422frame, the character finally reached the correct position.
My analysis: My updated code successfully solves the problem of motion blur when Vcam is switched, but because the character's motion blur is calculated using another set of mechanisms.
Somehow, the character actually performed the switch SHOT operation at 421 frames.
In short, the character's movement is one frame later than the camera switch.
PS. I think your plugin still seems to have problems in calculating the number of rendered frames. In fact, the true correct shot cut occurs at 420 frames, not 421 frames.

So maybe you can have a better way to solve this problem.

 

One important question: how do you move your camera? With Cinemachine, Timeline animation curves, or you don't move it? There are two methods that are used with deckard for estimationg motion blur. One is interpolating camera movement between camera positions. Another is using timeline positions. If you don't have any timeline frames assigned, it will use first method, otherwise it will ask timeline for correct position on certain time of timeline. Animating camera in timeline is a correct way for doing it. But in that case, your modification on code won't work.
This is why it doesn't work on your character.
Main problem with multicamera approch is that Cinemachine/timeline have some bugs, and it always interpolates, no matter what. As I have read, new Cinemachine 2.0 should fix those issues.
But be aware, Using timelines as clips inside timeline has it's own problems, and nesting doesn't work perfectly. I didn't had time to update myspelf on those issues, but I remeber having them even with Unity Recorder (unrelated to Deckard).

I'm currently working on a Safe Rendering Mode for Deckard. It is somewhat slower rendering mode than a standard rendering mode that Deckard currently uses, but it should be more safe for current limits with HDRP/Raytrace, Cinemachine, or other third party plugins. It also allows better background rendering - so that one can render in background with Deckard, while still being able to work on a computer. Unfortunately, it comes with some impact on a speed of rendering, mostly when rendering simple scenes. On complex and heavy to render scenes, it should have more or less a same performance. So, it's more suited for scenes that generally render slow and require high-res rendering.

 

I am using Cinemachine. I create different vitural camera in different shot.I move vitural Cam with Manual keyframe in timeline or DollyTrack in cinemachine.They both work on timeline.

So do you think my changes to the code are reasonable? Will you add this part of the change to your code?
Or do you mean that you are prepared to solve this problem in a more thorough way. After all, my changes can only fix the camera motion blur.

I am using Cinemachine 2.5 and timeline version 1.3.2.
I do have timeline in timeline , but Unity offical demo do the same way.
They also have timeline in timeline..
I don't know how they deal with this problems.
Because they are rendering in realtime
When the shot is cut,they should have the same problems?
But I did't see this problem in their demo.

Yes，there are many bugs in recoder and I don't like recoder at all.
Do you mean that there will be a solution to this problem in the unreleased Cinemachine version?

Sad....
Do you have any suggestion for me?

If the problem can be solved, I think it is acceptable even if the rendering speed is slower. After all, we can all accept offline rendering.

When will this safe mode come out? We are looking forward to using it.

 

I must say that I've tried this functionality only once, and at time, it didn't work as intended. Not sure about how it works now, This problem might got solved. I will have to check it.
You don't see some problems if you don't use interflame scrubbing (sampling animations between frames). And this functionality didn't work for nested timelines before. So, nesting a timeline would produce no-motion blur.
I'm suggesting you to take the approach that I've described in my livestream: when you have a cut, add a frame for Deckard Render with a value of Shutter speed of 0 just before a cut, and restore it to 180 after a cut. This should fix those blurring issues.

 

hey, Thanks for this great tool!
I was wondering if your knew if there was anything new (in newer versions of unity maybe?) to the unity bug mentioned earlier: here, the child gameobjects being out of sync with animated skinned meshes?

 

This issue was fixed, you have to download this patch:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...enderer-for-unity.624439/page-13#post-5934638

 

Unfortunately for me, "forceMatrixRecalculationPerRender" breaks my soft cloth/hair and procedural eye/head movement solutions. I've had to disable it, so I still have the child object problem. It seems like the objects are rendering a frame or two ahead of the skinned mesh. Would there be a way to cause these objects to render later, maybe as a script that could be attached to each object as needed? Or maybe the "Safe Rendering Mode" feature you're planning will fix it.

On the plus side, I've managed to hack the Cinemachine PostProcessing extension into an vcam extension that controls Deckard Render's focus mode, target, distance, speed, plus - f-stop, shutter angle, exposure, white balance, tint and saturation, on a shot by shot basis in Timeline. It can also use the vcam's LookAt target as a focus target. No cross blending between clips I'm afraid (if someone can work that out, or any other improvements, would be great). Scripts attached, hope they are useful to someone.

 

Ok，I will try this way。
By the way，Doesn't the shutter speed change the exposure value?

 

An expansion on this workaround. This initially worked for me, I rendered a video but when it came back to the editor the camera was no longer rendering. No amount of resetting to a default layout (including after restart) would bring it back. However, I then switched to a customer layout that I had saved and back to a default rendering and it worked again.

 

At the moment, I think that there is a big bug in new Unity eitor UI. Even without Deckard, there are some strange things happening. It is, as it seems, mostly related to Package Manager. Currently I'm mostly unable to even open Package manager without Unity going nuts. I will have to investigate this.

 

No, for a simplicity of usage it does impact only a motion blur. Exposure is set separately, as exposure actually ins't a universal mesure (iso standard actually isn't a standard).

 

Safe Rendering feature is ready, in it0s experimental stage. You can download a patch from here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8uhqyzgigx8icxz/deckardsaferenderingmode_alpha.unitypackage?dl=0
Usage:
-Activate Safe Render Mode under Render Quality Settings.
-Set desired quality and Batch Groups. Less batch groups (1 - 2) gives a better motion blur quality, and more "safe" rendering on the expanse of rendering speed. More batch groups are less safe and more like a standard rendering mode. Good thing about safe rendering is that it should be pretty plug and play, and work fine with any other system or script in Unity.
It is also recommended/mandatory when using DXR raytrace in Unity. It gives more stability when dealing with some memory leak bugs in HDRP, and it works as an excellent denoiser for DXR global illumination.

 

This is AMAZING! I managed to import 'Deckard VR Camera Capture' and shoot some awesome handheld with my Oculus Quest, and it imports into Timeline perfectly. It took a wee bit of fiddling, after following Oli's first Livestream video so I thought I'd post these steps in case useful for others. Disclaimer, this may not be optimal but it worked for me:

My steps were (Unity 2019.3.14 Win10 GTX1070) :

1. Import Deckard Render to new Unity 3D project.
2. Import the Deckard Capture package addon (available for free on this thread)
3. Import Oculus Integration from asset store.
4. Open Deckard Demo Scene and connect your Oculus Quest by Oculus Link (or Rift presumably)
5. Add OVRPlayerController (but de-activate it, it will be enabled by Deckard VR Capture only during Play mode). Move OVRPlayerController to where you want your camera operator to start in your scene.
6. Add Deckard VR Camera Capture - and in the inspector set the controller. I chose auto and it found the Oculus default Right hand controller automatically.
7. in Deckard VR Camera Capture inspector, change the Activate setting to activate the OVRPlayerController' only when capturing. Leave 'Capture on Awake' unticked. Leave de-activate unused - not sure what this is for yet.
8. Create a new folder called 'captures' in './Assets/DeckardCapture/.' , needed for Deckard Camera Capture to save animation data there.
9. Press PLAY to start scene (and get ready to shoot handheld with your Oculus connected already by Oculus Link and powered on!).
10. Put on Oculus headset. (you should now be inside the scene where you placed your OVRPlayerController, and when you pick up your right hand controller, it displays a camera viewfinder window that you can point around in realtime, voila, your virtual camera in Unity!)
11. Push 'A' button on controller to start and stop recording. Perform your steady handheld camera movement. I bumped up the smoothing settings slightly. You can also move around with joystick, as you're shooting. ;-)
12. Exit Play and go to your Timeline.
13. In your Timeline. Create a new animation track and manually import the recorded animation onto the animation track. You have to navigate to the 'captures' subfolder to find the Deckard captured camera anim file and import it.
14. Target the animation track at your main camera, or the camera you want to move. Ideally the camera you are moving should be set at 0,0,0 transform and rotation position to avoid offset problems. Tip: also, for me, after importing the animation the movement was still offset from the Maincamera by a large amount. It was necessary to disable 'Remove Start Offset' on the Animation Clip inspector and then it matched perfectly.

Tip2: Sometimes Deckard View really slows down a lot in the Editor. But if I de-activated and re-activated Deckard Render on the main camera, it comes back to normal speed.

Hope that's useful to other virtual cinematographers out there with Oculus Quest. If I've got anything wrong, do let me know and I will edit this post.

I think this is pretty damned amazing for virtual production with Unity so thanks Oli. It will be very interesting for our projects. My only question is, if there could be a way to use the controller to capture camera movement, without needing to wear the headset (i.e. with viewfinder directly on computer monitor). This could be handy for film productions (non VR projects).

 

For Quest no, it's SDK requires a headset rendering (and it's presence for tracking).

 

Thanks, I'll check it out and report.

 

Sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, but does Deckard work with URP, or are there plans for that in the future?

 

I personally didn't test it, but there ia no any reason why it shouldn't work.

 

I do a simple demo and check it.
It seems work fine with cinemachine vitural cam,and sloved the motion blur problem between different shot .

However,after update it. I just can't render without check the safe render mode. If I uncheck the safe mode,it will just render black image.
But I will always using safe mode, so it will be fine.

 

Strange, this doesn't happen here. I will investigate on this issue.

 

Hey @olix4242 , I'm having a problem. I updated the asset today, closed Unity and opened it again, and now my whole screen looks like this and I can't do anything in Unity anymore. Any idea how to fix this?

 

I really don't think it has anything to do with Deckard Render. Try deleting Deckard Render folder and see if this persists.
But I immagine this is due to a bug in Unity (unrelated from deckard), I had similar issues in some of the latest unity versions if a package manager was open.
Or it also might be a latest Windows update that updates also a net framework (it was shipping in these days). I had ro reinstall some drivers and unity initially refused to read licence files.

 

Btw, it really looks like GFX driver problem.

 

Hmm, this was in Unity 2018.4.8f1, and only happened after I updated Deckard. I will try deleting the folder and see if I can go back to normal. When I open a different project with Unity 2019 or 2018 and the older version of Deckard, this doesn't happen.

 

Hey. love the potential of this asset but added a CC3 character to your demo scene and eyes teeth and tongue and hair are not in sync leaving the head when it moves, attaching them to the root-hip bone isn't an option ( I did play around with parenting them to the root bone and to other parts of the head rig just to check as per your trouble shooting reference) any other solutions or this will not be usable at all. Warmest.

 

Deckard should work flawlessly with CC3. I'm using it everyday. You should animate your character with timeline, and be sure to follow steps described in a help file that comes with Deckard. You shouldn't parent your meshes, but you shoukd insert correct root bones into a skin mesh render script.
This problem isn't related to Deckard, but it is a problem in Unity, that was fixed by unity in unity 2019 version - so if you need flexible and easy workflow, please upade your Unity (and deckard)

 

@olix4242 I see this asset specifically mentions that it works with Timeline and Cinemachine. Does this mean it won't work with Cinema Director or is that also possible?

 

It wasn't tested and you probably won't have a best results when dealing with motion blur. But, you could probably convert Cinema Director results to timeline animations with Unity Recorder.

 

Hi- I seem to be getting this persistent error, when I try to use Deckard.

See image below- When I attach it to the camera, all is good (top)

But when I hit "Play", it tells me there are no cameras rendering (bottom)

Can you assist? Thanks!

 

Turn off Maximize Game View before rendering and keep both scene view and game view on screen.

 

K- did that, and still got this:

 

Have you downloaded patch available here?
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8uhqyzgigx8icxz/deckardsaferenderingmode_alpha.unitypackage?dl=0

 

Yes, and I got this



Thing is, we're using unity 2019.2.3f1. Maybe that's the reason.

 

Strange. If you want, we can oganize a video call and I can look into your project and see if there is something that confuses it. Does this happen only with that scene or even with demo scene?