[RELEASED] Deckard Render - Cinematographic Renderer for Unity

Also: you don't want to use Motion vectors. Deckard is made for a need of not using them as they have problems. Deckard uses real motion blur, and no motion vector motion blur can match it in this task.

 

Well I am of the hopes of combining this with either Live Action footage or items created in other 3D apps. For example I can drop an element into Fusion and add additional items to a 3D Comp. With the proper Passes rendered you can do Deep Compositing. And we have done plenty of projects (With and Without Anti-Aliasing using Premultiplied Alphas) where the intention is to combine them in a composite at the end of the job.

I would love to see an option for both working methods. So far this renderer has blown me away. I can't say enough good things about it! If you are doing it all in Unity, this already is the Best Tool for the Job! But I would love to be able to use it in pipelines that allow us to mix it into the typical FX Shot Methods as well.

 

I gave this a super heavy scene in terms of Meshes and FX and it rendered 4K like a real trooper! I was wondering is there a way to get an alpha channel. I would love to animate a monster in Unity and then be able to add it to a Live Action shot.

 

Here is another test that I've made today.
I tried to render famous Blender Classroom benchmark scene in Unity with Deckard. Scene that usually requires around 5 minutes in Blender for a single frame at fullHD, with Deckard renders in under a one single second (on a similar specs PC). This makes Deckard more than 300 times faster than Blender Cycles renderer. This 280 frames animation was rendered in 1 minute and 30 seconds.

 

What are you using in the way of AA and AO? GTAO/HBAO+ and CTAA make great additions to Deckard. Your stairs in particular were a giveaway.

 

This looks great. A perfect example of DCCs vs Game Engines. This is exactly the type of content that helps sell this.

 

I had SMAA set on High (Same as the Deckard Sample Scene) And I threw in Aura 2 for fun. No AO at all. I wanted to test if Deckard could just handle a ton of meshes and textures without crashing at 4K. I am interested in what is the preferred AO and CTAA being used by Unity filmmakers these days. Any Recommendations on these?

 

For AA:
CTAA (Cine Temporal Anti-Aliasing) (link)
Mad Goat is another great (more affordable) option (link)

CTAA is quite impressive though. You can really hit it hard with specular highlights, deformed edges, and obscure blooms, and come away with clean renders.

For AO:
Amplify AO (link)
HBAO (link)

We don't use Amplify AO but have a similar in-house Ground Truth Ambient Occlusion. For cinematics, I'd suggest a combination of Unity's PPS AO, HBAO and a GTAO. PPS does the broad strokes AO of the full scene. HBAO fills in details nicely between meshes and then GTAO gets in all the little nooks and crannies. You have to be careful stacking all of them, but to say one performs better than all the others is missing the point of stylizing a frame or scene.

Take under an actor's eyes. If they have deep sockets and well-defined wrinkles, GTAO can add those really fine shadows and create major dimension to a character. It's night and day. HBAO doesn't always deliver that in a close-up. That's why you need a combination, which normally wouldn't happen in a game due to performance. In Cinematics, who cares, we'll wait the extra 1/10 of a second for the render.

 

I have been on the fence about this one.
1 Because it is pricey.
2 Because I have seen some truly Horrible reviews and then Reviews saying it is Fantastic.

I was a bit concerned because of no Average reviews. It either Sucked or was Great. But you feel it does the job for the Price?

 

When I add Mad Goat Deckard renders upside down.

 

Deckard has built in super sampling. I think it's under the Render Quality settings.

 

If you're a solo artist/dev, I'd consider Mag Goat. CTAA can be a reach at its current retail price with regards to Deckard. I don't know if you'll see your money's worth. If you have tools budget, then it's a good addition to multiple different types of renders/projects, but ideally you grab it when on sale.

I read the latest review with someone claiming it is a scam. As the dev states, the tool has been around for awhile. It was drag and drop with significant improvements here. I'm not sure what issues they had as it's all speculation, but the review is rather heavy-handed. I've never had issues contacting them or posting in the dedicated forum, but that's not to say communication may have slipped? Hard to say.

I haven't tested Mad Goat with Deckard, so that may change the conversation.

 

There is no any need to use Mad Goat.. Deckard has it's own supersampling that will ddo a better job.
As for CTAA, i don't reccomend using it. I have bought it before it hit assetstore, for well 200$, and never got any new update, so essentially I lost all my money. Also, I don't find it to do a better job in respect to Unity AA.
If you need best AA, just set Deckards supersampling to 1.2 - 1.5 and it should work perfectly.
p. s. Im working on some even better AA for Deckard.

 

How Strict is this Rule ?:
"If using Post processing Stack, place it right above Deckard Render script."

Because some effects like MK Glow only work if they are after the Post Processing Stack.

 

MK Glow is highly optimized but isn't a physically correct glow based on HDR. It is quite good when used on Mobile when you eventually don't want to use HDR rendering. But in the end, it is a more of "Creative" effect than a "real light behaviour simulation" effect.
Post processing stack should be placed as last effect (before Deckard Render) in cases when you want to follow HDR rules on lighting. This is because PPS remaps buffers to non HDR buffers (LDR) and if placing some effects before PPS could destroy HDR pipeline. This is probably a case with MK Glow - so yes, it is correct that it should be placed AFTER PPS. But, my personal suggestion is to go with HDR workflow and abandon effects that doesn't support it,. when rendering with Deckard where you don't have to think much about performance. (also because this kind of effects lately won't show on reflections).
So, this isn't a strict rule, but only a suggestion for photorealistic dendering.

 

Well I also should say that all the Amplify Products needed to be placed there as well.

 

So I wanted to get a bit more NFO on this. Do I apply the motion blur script to the root node or the top of the hierarchy? Do I need the Multi -Material script as well?
Where does that go if I do need it?
I have a Character Creator 3 Figure and its staying intact while moving around but I am not seeing the motion blur. (Unless it is being super subtle.

 

You don't have to apply any script on character for motion blur. You just have to animate it with Timeline, and Deckard will take care of MB. (Be sure that you are using latest version of Deckard and using atleast Unity 2018.3) Motion blur for characters isn't supported in older versions of Unity due to a Unity bug that affects skinned characters.
As for multimaterial script, this is for some effects for multilayered materials (like car paint) when you wan't to use coated materials (materials like carbon fibre) where you have glossy finish over a structured layer with different bump map or diffuse/specular properties.

 

Using Unity 2019.1.5f1 (64-bit), DeckardExport_1.2, Character animated in the timeline. I see Character Motion Blur in the Game View but none in the render.

 

As said and solved in private discussion, but just for others searchiung for a same question: be sure to animate your character with Timeline, and ti include your timeline on timeline field under animation settings in Deckard.

 

Is there a new Timeline field in Deckard? I missed this news/update.

 

Will motion blur not work if you use third party system like Slate?

Thanks
Cas

 

Yes, be sure to download new version from assetstore.

 

At a moment only a camera and object motion blur is supported for a third party animation systems (no skinned meshes support) and it's up to developers of those third party plugins to implement support for Deckard.

 

New developement - I'm working on improoving some Deckard features.
-improoved antialiasing and DOF
-major controll over lens configuration/shaping for customizable bokeh shapes.

 

New Anti Aliasing in action.

 

New version of Deckard is available on Assetstore.
It adds improoved antialiasing and DOF plus major controll over lens configuration/shaping for customizable bokeh shapes.

 

Excited to test out the latest.

For anyone interested, here is the Blender classroom link: https://download.blender.org/demo/test/classroom.zip

 

If you are interested, I could probably share this scene already converted for Unity/Deckard?

 

That would be great! Interested to see any custom Deckard Shaders in use. Haven't had a good test with Hair yet.

 

That scene doesn't use any custom shaders

 

Ok, here is a Classroom scene done for Deckard.. be sure to import Post processing stack in Unity 2019.1 (this scene works only in 2019.1 and later) via package manager.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/es7xej7ip3j1qwv/ClassRoomDeckard.unitypackage?dl=0

 

Thanks! I thought I saw a dedicated Deckard Hair shader somewhere in this thread?

Edit: Another question - do we also place FX like Fog Volumes inbetween Deckard Scripts?

 

I'm hoping this Tech matures and winds up being usable in Deckard for hair and fur.

 

This seems like an amazing asset. I was meaning to use Octane but I might just go with this one and I can throw away things like vray completely.
The things that I couldn't learn from the videos are:

First thing is that I haven't seen any mention of glossy reflections. Does it do raytracing and GI by default? I would like to get rid of postprocessing stack to fake for SSRR, Ambient occlusion, MB and pretty much all the physical effects and just go with this package if it actually works like mental ray or vray.

The other thing is, how does it deal with volumetric effects? I'm assuming it does all the transparency sorting correctly for things like alpha plane hair meshes, glasses and similar transparent objects without additional effort since it's raytracing, but does it support things like smoke and smoke shadows, physically correct refractions, light dissipation inside volumetric masses?

The third thing is does it support custom shaders made with amplify or shader forge or does it require unique shaders compatible with Deckard? And will things like emissive materials without light baking cast light around the scene?

And lastly what are the rendering times? Is there a video of Deckard rendering a complicated scene with the effects such as glossy noiseless reflections, depth of field, global illumination, volumetric scattering, and all?

Thanks, and again congragulations for creating this amazing product.

 

how does deckard compare to octane?

 

No, it doesn't do raytrace reflections or refractions by default. It can be used with SSR or in a near future with DXR raytracing in Unity (in experimental phase and requires RTX cards).
Deckard doesn't have integrated global illumination, and it requires to to use global Unity realtime GI and all the techniques that we have in Unity. It has it's own fast solution for ambient lighting. (but it works with SEGI, open source solution for realtime GI, by improoving it's quality and unstability)
Deckard improves quality of all image effects by greatly eliminating noise and instability typical for those effects.

It simplifies desing of volumetric shaders a lot. You can hind here some examples, like nuclear explosion and hair shading. Those are pretty simple shaders made in Amplify.

Unlike Octane, it works with any shader (or image effect) that works in Unity. Some shaders can be improoved with small modifications so that they get best of Deckard. Hor example, you can easily modify shader that has a scrolling texture and add a possibility for it to support motion blur (with one line of code). Also, you can easily make a shader that uses cutout but with a result of transparent shader (smooth borders).

Rendering times are extremely short. From my experience with some scenes that were rendered in another rendering engines, I could acheive times that were: 20 minutes for frame (in another software) vs. 1-2 seconds for frame in Deckard.
One of the important things to know is that deckard isn'ìt meant for still product shots that render for hours. Deckard is for motion shots and animations. It is ment for production, where you want fast rendering, and perfect image quality (without noise or spatial and temporal aliasing issues).
Deckard also renders DOF, soft shadows and motion blur without any performance overhead. You can have all of them turned off or on - and rendering times essentially don't change.

 

Thanks for sharing this! I just purchased Deckard and tried this scene. I installed the Post Processing stack, imported Dekard and then imported the classroom package. There are no errors in the console but the hierarchy shows a missing prefab at the top and some objects have missing scripts. I also switched to linear color (as suggested by the Deckard component) but everything looks over exposed (I'm guessing it's related to the missing component in the light?). Otherwise this renderer looks amazing! Thanks.

 

Ops.. could you write me what objects are missing?

 

With the latest version, do we need to apply the Deckard Motion Blur component to skinned meshes? I don't think we're seeing motion blur on them. It could be due to the camera shooting through a transparent glass shader, but I feel we should still see noticeable blur from running animation.

 

No, you should never apply Decakard motion blur to skinned meshes! But, what is a must for skinned meshes? You should always animate them via Timeline. And also be sure to set timeline component in Deckard Render.

 

Hello can it render images to transparent background. Also how much time it takes to render 1 10sec move and 1 single Image

 

Render time depends entirely on what is in your scene. Complex scenes with physics, particles, high res textures, lots of motion, etc will take longer.

I have an 1100 frame scene that currently takes 15-18min to render at 1280x720. About 30min in full HD.

It is rather complex with a huge amount of 2K/4K textures. The renders are in the ballpark of what I get from Arnold Render in Maya/C4D as far as noise, aliasing, and color (still need to improve reflections/refraction in Deckard/Unity). In Arnold it takes ~1.2-1.5min per frame. That's 24-27 hours on the same 12 core machine. GPU render is slightly better but more noise.

Head to head, the Arnold renders are sharper, offer different DOF options (near plane primarily), and can handle the usual complex DCC lighting that requires more finesse inside Unity (volumetrics, scatter, AO, accurate refractions/reflections, GI, etc). But you have to weigh render times with the actual content you're creating.

Look at the recent Sherman sample the Made for Unity team did as an example. If you said Pixar made that short, 9/10 viewers would believe you. 24hr DCC renders are not always going to tell a better story. I think that's the interesting proposition that Deckard/Unity creates.

 

You didnt answer my question about transparent background. If i wana render 1 char with 1 light with transparent background as png file is it possible

 

I'm not the dev. Just a user.

I was giving an in-depth response to your question "How much time does a render take".

OliVR is the dev on Deckard. He'll respond regarding your background on Alpha (which I believe has already been answered in this forum).

 

No, this feature isn't supported and I don't know when or if it will be. I'm still trying to find my way around, but there are too many things in unity that makes this feature pretty complex to implement correctly. I have explained it here:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/rel...renderer-for-unity.624439/page-2#post-4310272
Woraround would be to make a post processing effect that separately exports masks. But this would require rendering a scene second time for a alpha mask.

 

Calculus is pretty simple:

Code (CSharp):

1. (deckardQualityValue *2 / realtimeFramerate) * animationSeconds * framerate

So, if your scene runs, lets say, at 100 fps without Deckard, for rendering with deckard (and all bells and whistless that it gives) it will be:
((70 (standard Deckard quality) * 2) /100(Realtime framerate)) * 2 * 10 (seconds of animation) * 24 (animation fps) = 672 seconds. Ten seconds animation will require 10 minutes in theory. But it moslty is faster than a formula calculation (as there are some optimizations that are improoving performance).
Also, it pretty depends on your hardware. I have noticed that RTX cards can actually speed up thing much more - so with RTX cards this rendering time can be almost twice as fast in respect to formula above.

 

Thats sad i wanted to use this to render rendered char images for my Visual novel. Can you show me a screenshot of what can i achieve with workaround method of yours.

 

Greetings, I've just purchased the asset. Looks very promising!
Got a couple of question:
1) I am using Cinemachine - how can I change focal length on Virtual Cameras? It seems that this option becomes locked whenever I add virtual cams.
2) How can I animate DOF in Timeline?

 

You can animate DOF as usual by adding a Null Gameobject as your focus. Then apply this to Deckard (in the component there's a box for Focus). Then just animate the null in Timeline as you normally would with Cinemachine.