Reference - Camera Controls

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reference materialLightwave Camera controls and settings
by Vonda Yarberry

Within Lightwave 9.6 there are many camera type choices. You select these from within the Camera Properties panel. illustration a

Advanced Camera which recreates any real or imagined camera settings you can imagine - including fish-eye lenses . . . Perspective Camera speeds up renders in most complicated scenes using raytracing but will also render shadow mapping as well. Orthographic Camera is great for doing just what it's name implies - rendering true orthographic views without any perspective. Surface Baking Camera is complicated and somewhat limited. Consult the Lightwave manual for information. Real Lens settings are basically a lot of presets for cameras and lenses that if you knew their technical specs- you could have plugged them into the Advanced Camera settings and gotten the same effect . . . so this is HANDY! Shift Camera is also a spin-off of the Advanced settings for a semi-popular but still obscure use for LW cameras to recreate what's called a view camera. This function easily allows you to move indepently the camera back and lens creating all kinds of perspective "shifts".		illustration a

Resolution settings - if you check "Use Global" on the Camera Properties panel, then the global render settings are used and you don't have to set this in 2 places. illustration a Resolution settings for use in the lab are detailed in many other help files.

Irradiance falloff simulates the darkening towards the boundary of the image, much like a real camera. A falloff of 0 effectively disables it; a higher falloff value makes the brightness drop off sharper and faster.

Antialiasing - [pronounced ANTI - A - LEE - ASS - ING] Meaning to smooth stair-stepped, jagged edges along vertical lines created on a standard grid of pixels - or what is known as "aliasing". Sampling Pattern Blue Noise generates a semi-random sample pattern and is best used when you are using a large number of samples (16 or more) or Adaptive Sampling is enabled. The Fixed pattern generates samples on a fixed grid. This mode works best with fewer samples or when the image contains straight edges. There is a limit of 64 fixed samples. If you select Fixed sampling and more than 64 samples, the additional samples are generated with Blue Noise. Since Blue Noise is semi-random, it does not produce Moré patterns when there are thin parallel lines close to each other. Classic sampling pattern uses a grid to sample. Oversampling is similar to the Enhanced modes for the Classic camera, where you oversample the pixel. the value will go from 0 (no oversampling) to 1 (sample current pixel and surroundings). Miss PLD smoothing but still want to use the Perspective Camera? Try this workaround: You can cause the antialiasing in the Perspective Camera to work more like classic antialiasing by setting the Antialiasing to 1 and setting the desired antialiasing level in the Motion Blur Passes. You must also select Classic Motion Blur, set the Blur Length to 0 (assuming you don’t want motion blur) and disable Adaptive Sampling. If you also set the Reconstruction Filter to Box (or any other mode) instead of Classic and select the Fixed Sampling Pattern, you will get the old PLD-n antialiasing. There is currently no way to access the Enhanced antialiasing style with the new antialiasing in Lightwave 9.6.		illustration b

Motion Blur WHAT is it? Motion Blur makes mini keyframes within a single frame of detected movement and renders the action in those steps and then attempts to blur it together in the appearance of motion that is blurred. There are 3 styles of Motion Blur: Classic, which is shown to the right, and you can see clearly the segments rendered in "motion". Dithered gives a more resolved blur effect using twice the movememnt data to make the blur. See twice the segments of motion in the illustration to the right. Photoreal motion blur allows multiple samples within each render pass and tends to be "smoother" - but you cannot use it with the classic camera! Settings Blur Length is percentage of the frame in which the "shutter is left open" 50% is half the frame (1/60 in a 30 frame per second animation) 100% is the whole frame . . . Antialiasing in perspective Camera mode should work well in low levels such as 1, sometimes you'll need to increase it to 2 or as high as 4 to get rid of the gaps in the blur. Motion Blur Passes is the number of steps in the between frame render of motion. Shutter efficiency controls the amount of light exposing the blur. 50% which is the lowest setting would mean the shutter is open only 50% of the frame but centered in the middle of that time - so the last and first element of the blur is darker, creating a mroe realistic blur - BUT it will appear shorter because of that darker edge. 100% is an even lighting over the entire frame duration, which means the blue is evenly lit and it is the same value the entire length - giving you the longest blur. You could compensate for a shorter/longer blur with the other controls. The motion blur effect works best to use Adaptive Sampling option under Antialiasing and adjust the Adaptive Threshold option (increase as appropriate)		illustration c - from Lightwave 9.6 manual

Depth of Field Depth of Field refers to the area of sharpness in front of and behind the actual area in focus. Illustration d gives an example - the top image has no depth of field and EVERYTHING is in equal focus; the bottom image has depth of field applied. When you enable Depth of Field in Lightwave you can change two settings: Focal Distance, refers to the distance from the camera to the object to be in focus; and Lens F-Stop. Actual, in real-life, camera focus typically encompasses a range, from near to far, that we call “in focus”. Objects nearer than this, or farther than this, appear out of focus or blurry. The Lens F-Stop value is a real-life camera setting which determines the range of focus around the Focal Distance (the near and far distances from the camera in which objects still appear in focus).	illustration d	illustration e

In real world cameras, the f-stop sets the size of the lens aperture. An f-stop of f/4 (which corresponds to a LightWave Lens F-Stop of 4) indicates an aperture diameter that is a quarter of the lens’ focal length. Higher f-stop numbers refer to a smaller aperture, because the number is the denominator of a fraction. On a real camera, the aperture (f-stop) also controls the brightness and sharpness of an image. In the LightWave world, the Lens F-Stop works ONLY in the context of Depth of Field where it affects only sharpness of the rendered image. The larger the Lens F-Stop value, the larger the depth of field, that is, the greater the distance between the near and far distances where objects appear in focus. Conversely, the smaller the Lens F-Stop, the smaller the range of focused area. You can also look at the scene in an orthogonal viewport and see a ring around the camera indicating the focal distance of your lens — the distance at which things are in focus. TIP: Rather than waiting for realistic renders when setting up and testing depth of field, use the Quickshade rendering for a quick preview of how blurry or sharp objects are in the scene. TIP: You can parent a null to the camera and link the focal distance envelope of the camera to control the focal distance simply by moving the null. This is helpful for really seeing where the focus in a scene will be. For specific instructions, follow this link. TIP: Many times Depth of Field can take enormous amounts of time to render. Another way of achieving this effect is by using a fake form of DOF - using the pixel filters: DOF Blur or Digital Confusion. See instructions below.

Using Image Filter "Digital Confusion" for DOF Under LW's main menu, select Windows> Image Processing. An Effects panel will appear that looks like the imeg to the right. From the Add Image Filter, select Digital Confusion. illustration f Some important things to know: Digital Confusion does not work with anything except the Class camera . . . Using the Classic Camera, the DOF features work the same . . . basically. But this is a FAKE pixel effect that can work well for many instances and save a LOT of rendering time even if using the Classic Camera. An advantage is that you can use an object as a reference object and it will compute the distance from teh camera to that object. So you COULD use a null and animate the depth of field. OR if you wanted a single object always in focus - you could use it as reference. Using the "Autofocus" setting, just select the object to use. The Diaphragm Shape is essentially the shape of the effect as “centered” on the camera position. Aspect ratio is the proportion / ratio of the shape – can be square which = 1 or elongated, etc 1.2 etc. There is an added pixel effect of luminosty and specular boost which can be advantageous. illustration g		illustration f

Using Image Filter "Depth of Field Blur" for DOF Under LW's main menu, select Windows> Image Processing. An Effects panel will appear that looks like the imeg to the right. From the Add Image Filter, select Digital Confusion. illustration i The DOF features work the same . . . basically. But this is a FAKE pixel effect that can work well for many instances and save a LOT of rendering time. illustration h		illustration i

Rendering Limited Areas Use the L key to activate. A yellow square will appear on screen with handles you can interactively slide until the yellow box encircles the area you would like to render. You have the choice of rendering with borders and without . . . "without" is just the area defined by the box; "with borders" puts the image within the render size where it would be if the rest of the image was rendered. This latter option is good for rendering a quick fix that then would be composited over the rest of the previously rendered footage . . .




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