[RELEASED] Deckard Render - Cinematographic Renderer for Unity

Thank you again for the quick support. I am glad that you found a solution to the grass. But I have problem with anything that moves. I made a bunch of tests with a custom made character from CC3 but decided to trash it and started a new project with the adam character and Deckard only. whenever I render with deckard the adam walk is jerky like the feet slips while rendering. I have to admit I haven't try the mixamo fix you proposed earlier because the fix wasn't working with my CC3 character. I might do something wrong because I am a bit new to unity but the test isn't hard to duplicate if you want.

I also had a great time playing with deckard while rendering a marvelous archviz pro interior while moving the camera around. The result is great! even for newbie

 

Can you share a video result? Or even a project? I don't think that there should or could be any problems with what you describe (if there isn't any problems with movement without using Deckard) but without a project, it is really hard to tell anything.

 

Big thanks you for Your great and profound review on assetstore. Yours is one of the best quality reviews that I've ever seen for any of my assets.

 

Thanks again for the quick reply, first class assets with first class service is always appreciated!

I will be happy to share the unity project tomorrow. On another note, I made some tests with vegetation studio Pro
with normal wind condition and it seems to work pretty well. This is really a great renderer. It makes everything look real!

 

In meantime, I have uploaded Adam character and I was able to reproduce this bug. A problem is a same as described before - different skinned parts had different root objects.
You have to select all pskinned parts (those outside of Adam_reference object). Then set root bone of Adam character to all of them (simple drag and drop to Root Bone field).
-You will probably have to change also Bounds value / extents.. set it to anything that is high. Otherwise you will get some objects that doesn't render.
Here is a small animation of Adam before, and Adam after:

 

But after all, I'm sure that there is a bug inside Unity also in this character system. I will try to submit it and see what happens.

 

Thanks a lot again for the quick reply and solution. The motions are smooth now for both Adam and also my custom CC character, problem solved! Last time I tried the fix proposed(for mixamo character), I did not understand how to proceed and couldn't not make it work. This is a real simple and easy solution once you go thru it one time of course!

 

Thank you for your great and flattering review

 

Good news for those wanting to try Deckard with HDRP:
HDRP SRP support is on it's way. It is still an experimental feature but from my tests, it seems to work pretty fine.

 

Ok HDRP support is done, if someone want's to test it it can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7u7ffwx8sdq0wzb/DeckardPPS_HDRP.unitypackage?dl=0

Installation instructions:
-Download Post Processing Stack v2 via package manager (if you already don't have it in your project).
-Download a DeckardPPS_HDRP.unitypackage and import it into Unity

Usage:
-Be sure that you are using HDRP SRP in your project
-When used with HDRP, deckard requires Post Processing Stack v2.
-Add Deckard Render component to your camera.
-IMPORTANT: Deckard will suggest you to switch your camera to Deferred HDR Redndering. DON'T DO IT! Just skip this step.
-Add Post Process Layer and post process Volume (as you would normaly do for Post processing effects).
-Find your active Post Process Profile, clik onto Add Effects button.
-Add "Deckard SRP_PreProcess PPS" effect
-Add "Deckard Post PPS" effect
-Disable Image Effects in a scene view
Now a Deckard should be enabled and working.

 

HDRP support already? Wow great news!

 

Damn, this guy grades! haha. Thank you -- this was important to me. Purchased!

Rob

 

Deckard 4K Test

 

Usage:
-Be sure that you are using HDRP SRP in your project
-When used with HDRP, deckard requires Post Processing Stack v2.
-Add Deckard Render component to your camera.

I did some quick tests but could not add the deckard component on my camera with the HDRP . I tried with the default HDRP template from unity (2018.3.4f1).

 

Can tou add Deckard camera from contextual menu?

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

If you mean by selecting the camera in the hierarchy window and right clicking... No I can't
Also, when I look into the download deckard asset there is a SRP folder but no HDRP folder. Is this what I should see?

Thanks.

 

Yes. Folder is correct.
Check unity cpnsole that you don't have any compilation errors in your project. Have you imported post processing stack v2?

 

The post processing stack is in the asset folder but not assigned to the camera yet. I usually insert the deckard component than the post processing if needed. I have no error in my console. By the way there is no rush for me to make it work, I was just doing a quick test.

 

The renders look very good! Does this work with android too?

 

This is not for runtime playing on a device. It's for offline rendering via the editor.

 

A ok, so rendering on android will not be possible, even if it is not realtime. Is the source code included? Maybe it can be ported to mobile (unsure if i can do that, but its worth a try)

 

Even if you have access to the source code (which I'm not sure you get with this asset), it's doubtful any Android device currently has the GPU power necessary. That's one of the main reasons why this isn't a runtime asset (no current consumer GPU can render at this quality in real time).

 

Could this be used to render a screenshot from a standalone build? Like press a button in game and get a screenshot from the game camera that's rendered using this instead of what's used to render the game?

 

Right now you can't do this. But it is already on TODO list so pretty soon it will be possible.

 

GOOD NEWS:
I'm working on a full Timeline integration that should simplify workflow for those using Timeline.

 

Thanks for all the attention and tips in this thread. I'm starting to get renders I'm happy with.

 

Are you using deckard hair shaders? If you want, you can send me one of models in private, and I can maybee work a little vit on hair shader.

 

Thank you, I've downloaded your hair shader, but I was a bit confused by the parameters…
Could I ask for maybe a brief tutorial instead? That way everyone could benefit.

 

I would love a tutorial on Deckard hair shaders too.

 

Wow, this looks awesome!

I want to purchase this asset, but first I have some important questions.

What exactly is the workflow? I'm not a Unity veteran yet and I'm not sure what "offline rendering" entails. Do I just click the Play button? Or is there anything else I need to do?

During the rendering process, do I see what's being rendered, or will it just output the finished result?

I'm currently using Unity Recorder and Cinemachine to capture my scenes, with a Timeline. The thing is, I am "cheating" a little. Because I can't simply use the Animator/animations to move my models around (it's complicated), I either use pathfinding or manually control them via the keyboard. Is keyboard input during recording possible at all with Deckard?

 

Offline rendering means - rendering that doesn't work in realtime. It is like rendering in any standard 3d software like Max, Maya and so on..

Yes, you see all frames, but your animation renders frame per frame slowed down. Also, you can preview live without play, by using lower quality settings of rendering.

No, you can't controll your them in realtime as rendering process works mostly at 0.5 -1 fps per second.
But, eventually you can use Unity Recorder (and it's animation recorder functionality - it is a functionality that records into unity animatio instead of Video file) to bake your animations into animator-timeline - and afterwards render your scene to video with Deckard.

 

Thank you for this fast reply and the explanation! I didn't realize that the Recorder has an animation feature, I'll need to try it out today. :0
If I can get that to work the way I need it, I'll definitely go ahead and buy Deckard.

 

Alright, it's me again!

I purchased the asset yesterday and kind of got it working. (The recording of the animations worked great, too. Thank you so much for the tip, it makes things ten times easier for me.)

But I'm having a few problems/nitpicks:

1. Whenever I open the scene, Deckard automatically turns itself on. I have to turn it off manually again. It also doesn't turn itself off after recording. This is a problem for me, because when it's turned on, my editor slows down and lags to the point of making it really hard to navigate to the camera and turning Deckard off for the time being.
   Is there a way to get rid of this behaviour? Is it intentional?
   
   
2. Like I said above, the editor performance decreases dramatically when Deckard is turned on. It's basically unusuable. What could be a reason for this? Is my computer just not good enough? The rendering happens at a decent speed (up to 1 frame per second), but everything else is painfully slow. For now I just turn it off whenever I'm not rendering, but see issue 1.
   
   
3. Is there a way to preview a frame from somewhere in the middle of the render without rendering everything that comes before it? With some longer scenes I want to make sure it looks like I want it to, and rendering up to that point costs a lot of time if I have to discard the render afterwards because I got a detail wrong.
   
   
4. Maybe I'm used to over-the-top blurriness, but I can't seem to get the DOF to work the way I want it to. When I set the focus further away, everything up to the focus point is sharp as well. And the rest is not blurry "enough" for what I'm trying to achieve. Right now I'm adding the Post Processing DOF on top of Deckard's DOF to achieve more blurriness, but I'd like to know what the "correct" Deckard settings are for making PP unnecessary.
   
   
5. And one more thing! When I render the scene, it outputs a lot of images, but doesn't combine them into a video in the end. I currently do that manually in Premiere Pro, but from reading the Deckard documentation, it seemed to me like it's supposed to make a video from the finished images?

Sorry for the many questions, but I want to make sure I'm using this asset right! It seems very promising to me, it would be a shame if I couldn't get it to work properly.

Cheers

 

Yes, it is intentional. If you don't want it to turn on, just deactivate component.
As for lagging, you have to tune your performance in editor:
-Set your game view to fixed resolution, something that is pretty low for comfortable workflow. Then use Scale slider to fill your Game view.
-In Deckard settings set Use Half resolution for previewing. This will require 4x less processing power.
-drop down Max Progressive Quality.
-turn off Deckard rendering by using deckard on-off button in a scene view.

You can do this if you are triggering animations with Timeline. (in playable director you can set initial time value).

Hmm, don't ever use unity DOF with Deckard It degrades everything.
Deckard is 100% physically accurate simulation of depth of field. Focusing at infinite does what you describe. It does this in real world, and so it does in Deckard. These are just laws of physics/optics. As you focus point moves farther away from camera, your IN-FOCUS distance gets bigger.
https://www.techradar.com/how-to/ph...al-length-and-focus-control-sharpness-1320959
There are other factors that also influence DOF like camera Field of View (Focal lenght). Unity by default uses pretty big Field of View (60 degrees) - a field of view that is rarely used in cinema, also because it doesn't give much of any blurring. More you zoom in with a camera, more DOF blurring you get. That's why a real cinematic render requires some more manual work on placing cameras wisely and in-game camera setups aren't enough for good cinematic look. For example, in game you will preferably place a camera behind your character at 2 meters distance, and use a wide lens. In cinematographic sequence, you will wan't to move your camera further away and use narrow lens - 50mm - 100mm.
Also, a sensor size is crucial for having more blurring. Bigger the sensor is, more blurring you get. Imax sensors have most of it. But you can set also a custom sensor size in Deckard. so playing with it you can get shallower depth of field.

You have to import FFMpeg pack into your project (it is described in Deckard Manual).

 

Okay, I will try those settings.

Oh, oops. I forgot that this option exists. Thanks for the hint!

Thank you for the link, I gave it a read and some things are clearer to me now.

What I was doing was setting the focus point at about 57, because the subject I want to be sharp in my scene is pretty far away from the camera. At this setting, the subject became sharp, but the background and foreground weren't blurry enough for my tastes anymore.

My Field of View is at about 40 or below, if I remember correctly. (Can't check right now, I'm not at home.)
I couldn't figure out which lense sensor I have to use, so I ended up using a very small sensor. That could be the problem. I'll try using a bigger one, because I want a very shallow depth of field. c:

Oh I see! Looks like I misunderstood the manual on what the FFMpeg does. I'll go import it.

 

Can this be used with this:

https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/video/offline-render-60925

 

Hey @olix4242, is there possibly a way to contact you via email? I ran into a rather unique (I think) issue, which I'd prefer to discuss through email.

EDIT: I fixed the issue, it turned out it wasn't related to Deckard.

 

Hi, just bought and learn ... but, when I open demo & hit play, I get this error with non-stop:

MissingComponentException: There is no 'Animator' attached to the "Main Camera" game object, but a script is trying to access it.
You probably need to add a Animator to the game object "Main Camera". Or your script needs to check if the component is attached before using it.
DeckardRender.DeckardRender.LateUpdate () (at Assets/DeckardRender/Scripts/DeckardRender.cs:504)

any suggestion?
I'm using unity 2018.2.14f

 

Hi, problem fix. Just remove out the motion blur script at camera component.
Look like, no animator target on it will make this script madness ....

 

Yes, you can always contact me on support mail - and this is preferred way if you need fast help. (unfortunatly, sometimes Unity forum bugs and doesn't give me any notifications about new posts).

 

Sorry about that: I'm not sure why this happens. I will investigate this issue.

 

A new Deckard Render will come soon, and it will introduce some new features, more demoes and shaders, and some fixes. Most important things:
-fix for animated character offsets that happens when using characters with multiple materials and body parts.

Apparently, this was a bug in character animation system in Unity, and Unity added a fix for it (for manually updating character poses). But this fix works only for Unity 2018.3 and later.
-Improoved adaptive quality when working in editor. This should preserve better framerates when moving objects in viewport.
-Powerfull but simple to use Chroma Keying shaders for videos. You can now easily add chroma keyed objects to your scene with full shadow support and no Z-fighting issues. This is mostly targeted to users that use Deckard for movie production.
-Support for Unity Timeline. Now a timeline will be prefered instead of Animator workflow suggested before. I'm still not sure if cinemachine can work well with this apporach, but I will have yet to explore.
-Tilt shift effect.
I have done also a support for PPS2 and HDRP, but it looks like it won't work in a new Unity 2019.1 as it doesn't use PPS2 anymore, but an integrated post processing system.. So I will have to make it compatible with new Unity workflow.
-Hair, refraction, blurred glass and volumetric effects examples.

 

Gotcha! Luckily I could fix my current issue, but if any more should pop up, I'll email you.

I'm excited for the new version! For me, the multi-part object animation offset is still wonky (even in Unity 2018.3), so I hope your fix will do the trick. Currently, I'm relying on some "cheating" to get the parts to stay in place.

This part confuses me a little. I'm using the Timeline (with Cinemachine) to animate and render right now, have I been doing it wrong? It works pretty well as it is.

 

Yes, it works, but it also requires few steps if you want to have quality motion blur on moving objects like setting Deckard Motion blur on objects that requre MB. And this can be sometimes confusional when dealing with hierarchy obejcts. With timeline integration this step won't be neccessary anymore - and it should also enable correct motion blur for characters.

 

Oh I see, thanks for clearing that up! I'm looking forward to this change, then.

 

Here a demo video for human skin & hair.
Erm ... my heart are complex

 

After a few days learning, here a result where I can accepted.
Only deckard's human skin & hair shader.

 

Some experiments with deckard and some custom volumetric shaders.

 

Just to summarize everything here for Deckard, is the following correct?

- Supports Timeline, Cinemachine, and HDRP (with some caveats?)
- Does not require special shaders but does work better with custom Deckard Shaders?
- The root bone fix is no longer needed for Skinned Meshes in 2018.3?
- The time fix is no longer needed for grass animated objects in 2018.3?

Questions
- Do fluid and physics simulators such as OBI cloth, fluid, rope work?
- Is there a newer version already available that’s not in the Asset Store? It shows March currently.

 

@olix4242 I'd also like to know about the questions @josterday asked, but I also have some of my own in addition.

• What exactly isn't supported currently with PPS2? I've seen mention of Screen Space Reflections. Is this the only thing? Why does this differ from PP1 to PP2, seeing as PP2 should be the better product correct?
• What is setup and useage like? Is there a long and specific process or is it add a couple scripts, animate your scene, and hit the render button?
• Do you plan on makin a screenshot button instead of having to export multiple frames?
• Anything in mind that doesn't render well with this renderer? Specific post effects? Worldspace UI? Volumetric effects like Aura 2 and Volumetric Light Beam? Screen space effects like Screen Space Snow?

Thanks in advance.