[RELEASED] Deckard Render - Cinematographic Renderer for Unity

Perfect. Is there any video or image showing the examples of the softlight? Or even a demo?
Today I'm using NGSS (Next Gen Soft Shadows), but the behavior is the opposite from real life. The closer (the light source) the harder and the farther the softer the shadow. It really annoys me.

I really want to have a different look. DOF of PPS is crap.
And also the radial motion blur. Deckard looks perfect!! I need the realistic stuff.
Even when I use large apertures the blur of the PPS will never be too big.
Can you send any image showing the DOF result of a 135mm f/1.8 lens? I want to see how blurred can be the background.

I have the point of focus info, so it might not be so difficult to feed Deckard, right?

I read that Deckard doesn't influence the exposure. Is that right?
How could I simulate the exposure that is happening on the PPS?

Is there an e-mail that we can exchange more sensitive info?

 

With the current interface in Deckard, you can capture the first frame as jpg to a folder on the hdd. This function exists now.

 

Perfect!! During the runtime? Or only on the editor?

 

I was referring to editor.

I've used 3rd-party solutions to grab a frame-on-the-fly while Deckard is running in the editor.

If you want Deckard in a build, I'd suggest some scripting that activates Deckard and then captures the frame – sort of a program-your-own 1-button screencapture.

There are a lot of quality settings in Deckard that impact how slow it renders, but I wouldn't even try making it run in-game for more than a "beauty" render still.

It's not without issues. I have to fight with Unity a lot.

 

Good! Thanks for the precious information!
I can't program, but I have someone that said that will give it a try.

Does the Soft Shadows work only inside the Deckard or it will be visible (previewed) inside the runtime also?

 

You can see it here:

But, you should account that DOF changes with focus distance.. so it's not a perfect example.

This are few examples of soft shadows from Deckard:
First one is with a closer light.

Second is with a light farther away.

 

Thanks for sending the samples.
Do you have any idea on how I can keep the exposure as it happens on the PPS, but using the deckard?
I've seen that it doesn't darken/brighten the exposure when changing aperture nor shutter speed.

 

Deckard has an exposure setting. But it isn't linked to aperture, shutter speed or ISO. This is because linking those values would be a hassle that can't be physically correct, as those values are all linked to ISO, that is completely arbitrary value (even if it states that it is a standard, it is used differently by all camera manufacturers).
Deckard does this thing like a perfect camera/optics should do. Any physical properties on exposure would be missleading, and too complex to use. In real life you have to compensate with ND filters or lighting intensity, that makes everything difficult.

 

BTW, you can still use PPS exposure if you want, while rendering with Deckard.

 

For the surplus images above the current total frame number, couldn't you send some parameters to the MP4 joiner to process only the correct number of images, not all in the folder?

It is very common to render only a section of a longer animation, so I would welcome a working "section rendering" mode.

 

I found a bug: If during rendering the camera gets deactivated, Deckard will get stuck, and the cancel button will not do anything. I have to shut off Unity from the Task Manager.
The same happens if playmode is paused by an error.

 

Okay that looks like it worked. It is however exceedingly slow and not entirely practical for my use. I am really just after the accumulative motion blur in Deckard. Is it possible to enable only specific features?

 

No, you can't. Or it's better to say - turning off other features won't give you any performance increase as all those additional features don't have any impact on a performance - they are completely free for processing.

What do you mean by exceedingly slow? What rendering times are you getting?

 

The times are fine for animation render. I just meant they aren't really suitable for my use case.

Do you have a discord? I have a few questions i'd like to ask you about if possible.

 

Frame range can be managed from timeline - it is enough to set yoour starting point (in Playable Director) that you need timeline to start at certain frame. Then set number of frames to render with Deckard.

I probably could... and I should look into ffmpeg documentation if this can be done. Not sure.

 

Nope, I'm not using it.. but you can catch me on Skype if it's not a problem.

 

That will work fine. Could you PM me your username.

 

Hello.

I'm collecting unity offline render information for 3D animation.
Can Deckard Render output a rendering path for composites?
Also,is it possible to render two or more cameras at the same time?

 

It can output some things as Depth or Alpha in separate passes (requires to be rendered multiple times) by using aditional image effects that can be found here in support forum.
But it overall doesn't have much sense, as most of things where Deckard is good, would simply clash with channel outputs. Deckard is best at doing motion blur, antialiasing and DOF - and all those effects can't be used with normal, depth, motion vector channels. So you would have to turn them off - but then, why using Deckard if you have to do lighting outside of Unity and still do some approximations that are still simple image effects - for motion blur and DOF.

No. You should see Deckard as a simulation of a real (physical) camera. It does what real camera can do.
When working with Deckard, it enables some things that otherwise can't be done easily in Unity. I am for example using Unity as compositing system and rendering out things with Deckard. I have also included some shaders for a high quality Chroma Keying that works with Deckard and enables you to work with video footage directly in Unity.

 

What camera settings will allow to have "unmodified" colors?

In my case I have the camera background set to a particular solid color.
Also, I render the text titles and icons in the same run with the rest (with a camera-space UI) and the color of the titles is important to be a certain color. The colors are important to be true as they behave like trade-mark colors.
(Note: the UI in Screen Space mode will not render with Deckard.)

When I render with Deckard, all the colors are modified per the Deckard Film Response Type and Exposure settings, but even in Neutral response type the colours are shifted.

The very best solution so far was to set the "Filmic Color Amount" to zero and set Exposure to 0.66 (why this value?) to have the UI text colors and the background color the same as they are set in RGB.

But this isn't a satisfying solution because if I would want to play with Exposure and Film Response Type for the 3D part of the animation, I can't change these values because then the titles and icons and background will get affected.

Is there a current solution for the above?

 

You can't get "correct" RGB values when filming with Deckard. As you can't get 'correct colors" when filming with real camera. There is no such a thing as real colors. Color perception is relative to lighting, and colors shift as they resond to lighting. In a real world, you have to compensate with lighting and a white balance and probably with color correction afterwards. And even then you will not get exact RGB value (if it's what you are aiming for). Video space is different than SRGB space. Also, different gamma's influence color perception. But a different lighting is a key to undestand how much colors are relative. Try to make o photo of one single color page in different lightting conditions, and you will get completely different results. Then try to use different cameras, and you will get even more shift in colors. Famous example of color shift was this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress
As Deckard is a simulation of real camera, it behaves like a real camera and threats light and colors as if it was a real world.

You are right.. it's pretty strange that exposure has to be set to this value. I think that this could probably be an issue with Unity 2019 and some changes in dynamic range introduced in Unity. I will check this one to se what happens. It also might come from conversion from Linear color to SRGB.

As said above.. logics behind film sensors and films are that they are interpreting colors differently than a simple screen that takes RGB input. If I was in your place, I would try to activate Deckard with desired cinametographic profile, and manually try to adjust your color to match your reference. I would also try different approach and wouldn't use rgb colors from screen as a reference, but a printed pantone color on a sheet. Or take a different route: add titles in a post production. Or correct them by using selective color.
BTW, you can't never match video colors to RGB image colors. Video by itself uses different color space (709).

p. s. I'm planing to introduce some color conversion shaders, that will simplify inverse color correction. For exampel, if you wan't to import CScape movie as a background and render Cscape scene on top of that, you have to convert Cscape video back to linear colors. But this is pretty complex for a workflow.

 

To Anyone:

I like the image quality you get from the Deckard Render... but it runs SUPER SUPER SLOW. What may I be doing wrong and/or what can I do to speed things up? The scene is not that complicated and my computer is not bad.. (Xeon e5-1620 v3@3.5ghz, 32GB RAM, AMD FirePro W5100) Any help would be appreciated. Thank you!

 

Are you trying to use it as a real-time solution? That's not what it is intended for.

 

Some new tests made in Deckard:

 

I saw this in the PDF manual "Due to closed API for Alembic importer, motion blur currently isn’t supported for Alembic animations."
I am going to see if I can get someone to open this up because most of what we will be doing is Alembic and USD.

 

Looks like Manual Focus (adding gameobject to Focus On) may not be working properly in HDRP.

The Deckard Viewport shows objects properly in focus, but after rendering, the images are clearly out of focus and the focus distance is being defaulted to the far background.

Going to try keyframing the Main Camera's Focal Distance in Timeline to see if it's working manually without a game object or just defaulting to a fixed value regardless of input.

Edit: I was originally using a null parented to the root bone of the character being animated. After creating a new null and animating it manually, it seems the focus is back to working. Strange that it wouldn't properly grab the transform data from an object parented to the character prefab.

 

I am using the latest Deckard and Unity 2018.4.6f1. PNG's won't render at all but JPG's do. And depth of field is not rendering on my frames. Using 4K resolution and Micro Four Thirds sensor size..

 

PNG's should be rendering correctly. Just notice that that they have alpha set to 0, so you might not see images, but all pixel data is there - and video will be generated correctly.

Are you using timeline for animation? Be sure that you follow all steps explained in manual. Also, avoid using any scripts that can change Camera transform other than Timeline.

 

Hi
How can I switch enable / disable deckard render in my script?

 

Greetings!
Great asset!
I got a problem Unity 2019.1.10f1 whenever I try to add Bloom from PPS2 the camera goes blackscreen.

 

I tried to use the Nvidia Flex plugin for some waterdrops running on a surface. The water particles render as black quads with Deckard. Is there something to do to correct this issue?

 

Can you post a screenshot from your setup? This shouldn't happen. btw, check if your script order is correct(as described in manual).
Are you using PPS from assetstore or PPS from package manager?

 

I have tried to install Flex, but it doesn't work in Unity 2019.1 because it uses some deprecated functions. I'm unable to test it on some other Unity version as I'm away for holydays. But I immagine it uses some rendering methods that aren't compatible with rendering into textures.

 

Question why are there not 3 colors shown when you use, "Show Focus Fields"? There should be a zone for In Focus and a Zone Before and after it Showing the out of focus zones. I am only seeing 2 zones and 2 colors.

 

Just tried to render a 4K sequence with Unity 2019.2.1f1 and it started rendering every other frame upside down for some reason.

 

This feature displays front and back focus zones and where those colors meets that should be considered as a line of best focus.. in optics there is no such thing as absolute in-focus zone other than a infinitely thin line.
Depth of field (distances from start of being in focus and end of being in focus) is always relative to print size/projection size and this value changes if you have a same video, but it gets projected on mobile phone screen or big cinema screen. So we can surely say that this value isn't absolute, but is on contrary a relative/subjective value. Less when dealing with photography prints, and much more for video content that can be scaled across different size screens.

 

Does this happen also when rendering in lower resolution? Is your camera looking straight up or down? How do you move your camera? With keyframed timeline or in some other way? This could happen if you use paths to animate with cinemachine. Also, this can happen due to a bug in Unity that flips render textures (this bug emerges from time to time from one unity version to another - didn't had to deal with it and Deckard, but I had problems with it in past when making some other plugins).

 

No Cinemachine, Just 2 keys on the timeline. I was rendering the meadow by Naturemanufacture at 4K. The first 5 frames rendered properly then it started flipping every other one. Also the motion blur on the plants was rendered improperly as well. Massive blurring in 2 directions.

 

Yes I know this, But in lenses the foreground has a zone that approaches the "In Focus Zone" as well. This is typical shown with 3 distinct colors. And if you change the focus distance they change accordingly.

 

Go to your terrain, and divide "Grass Speed" value by Deckard Render Quality value multiplied by two.

So, if your "grass speed" = 0.5 and your Rendering Quality is 70, you should do this calculation:
newGrassSpeed = 0.5 / 70 * 2

That should improve motion blur. I've found it can still be a little intense, so I'll often lower the speed slightly further. We're also finding a 180* shutter can give some pretty heavy motion blur, so we're actually seeing a lot of shots with 90* and 45* shutters when the camera and actor is moving.

 

Thanks for trying to test it, but as I was in a hurry, I bought OBI Fluids which was recommended in this forum and it works well so far.

 

Hey Adam!
I am using it to render out an animation. It is a small scene, but everything is in 4K so it may be the amount of memory that the textures are taking up... but just in case. What are some things I need to check to make it run a little smoother?

 

Any update in this?

 

When I have a Biped-animated character, composed of multiple skinned meshes, performing animation during a Deckard render, the different meshes get out of sync. For instance, the character's head bobbles, or they move away from their clothing. This does not happen in Unity preview mode.
I have tried setting Update Mode: Animate Physics on the animator components. And I have tried the Deckard "Use Precise Timing" option. No luck. Please help!!

 

By the way, I am attempting to use HDRP, and to render 4K @ 30 FPS. Thanks

 

Hi! First of all, I want to say that Deckard Render - it's a great tool and it has completely changed my approach and the way I work with the unity. Thanks OliVR!

Since I purchased this asset, I have been rendering small videos that did not need any automation or additional settings.

Now I have a more complex project ahead of me - I need to make a 30-minute video where the camera flies through a tunnel. There is no permanent focus object. The focus should change from the general plan of the tunnel to focusing on relatively small objects.

The first thing that came to mind was to automate the focal length on the timeline, but unfortunately unity could not capture the information about the change of the focal length parameter and display it on the timeline.

In general, my main question is how to control the focal length on the timeline?

And I would also like to clarify how to make the Aura 2 asset work properly with Deckard Render?

I'd like to make it clear that I'm new to work with unity (about 8 month). In general, I am engaged in 3D animation and little familiarity with programming and only recently began to master the game engines.

Thank you again for such a wonderful asset!

 

I am using PPS 2 from package manager
Whenever I increase intensity on bloom - this happens

 

My suggestion is to create empty game object and set it as "focus on" object. Then animate that target object so that it stays at a focus distance. This is a the most simple way.

 

You should look into Readme file that comes with Deckard and gives explanation:


"Some characters could have this bad habit of having problems with root objects, and this could trigger one of the bugs in unity. When this happens?
-your character uses multiple materials -each part of a character uses different root bone objects
FIX: -Select all skinned mesh parts (all character objects that use Skinned Mesh Renderer component) -In Skinned Mesh Renderer script look for a value of Root Bone. You will notice that all objects probably have different Root Bones. -In a hiearchy view find an object that is usually called "mixamo:Hips" (for Fuse characters). If you use your own custom characters, than this object chould be a root of your bones system. -Drag and drop this object into a Root Bone field. -Now, all your skinned mesh parts should have a same root bone object and your animation will play correctly."

Other that that, it is advised to use Timeline for animating any characters.
What Unity version are you using?

 

It's pretty hard to understand from this screenshot. There is one thing that puzzles me: Use Deckard Render value is turned off, and this means that Deckard isn't engaged.
Other than that, it looks like you are only rendering a depth. Are you sure that you dosn't have enabled option for facebook 3d image rendering?