From Affogato

Contents 1 Camera 1.1 Camera 1.2 Front Plane 1.3 Back Plane 1.4 Depth of Field 2 Animation 2.1 Output 2.1.1 Current Frame 2.1.2 Sequence 2.2 Frame Sequence 3 Motion Blur 3.1 Geometry 3.2 Geometry Parameters 3.3 Camera 3.4 Shadow Maps 3.5 Sub-Frame Accuracy 4 Shutter 4.1 Timing 4.1.1 Open on Frame 4.1.2 Center on Frame 4.1.3 Center Between Frames 4.1.4 Close on Next Frame 4.2 Configuration 4.2.1 Moving 4.2.2 Stationary 4.3 Offset 4.4 Angle 4.5 Motion Factor 4.6 Sample Motion 5 Motion Segments 5.1 Transformation 5.2 Deformation

Camera

Camera

The name of the camera object to view the scene from.

Front Plane

Creates a front plane geometry at the near clipping plane. The coordinates run from 0 at the top left corner of the image to 1 at the right and bottom. To attach shaders to this, create a null primtive with the special name __frontplane and instance any shaders under it. This null will not show up a as a coordinate system.

Back Plane

Creates a back plane geometry at the far clipping plane. The coordinates run from 0 at the top left corner of the image to 1 at the right and bottom.

To attach shaders to this, create a null primtive with the special name __backplane and instance any shaders under it. This null will not show up a as a coordinate system.

Depth of Field

Toggles rendering of depth of field effects.

Note: The F-stop, or aperture, and the focal distance, or point of focus, of the lens need to be set on the came through an Affogato property with two parameters named as such (fstop and focaldistance)

Animation

Output

Current Frame

Writes/renders the frame that the time slider is currently set to.

Sequence

Renders a sequence of frames.

Frame Sequence

A string specifying a frame sequence in Frame Sequence Format.

Motion Blur

Geometry

Controls whether objects will motion blur.

Geometry Parameters

Controls whether geometry parameters get written out at each motion segment.

Modern REYES renderer do shade at the start of each motion segment, so thye need data defined at this time (and the data can change). Switching this off will oprevent this data to get written out. This is useful is a renderer allows extrapolation of data from the start of the first motion segement over all segements for the resp. frame.

Camera

Controls whether the camera will motion blur.

If this is off, camera motion doesn't blur the frame. This is a useful feature if additional motion blur (e.g. camera shake) is applied in a compositing package afterwards.

Tip: In such a case, to obtain more accurate results, the image-plane-projected motion vector of the camera scaled by the distance to the lens for the resp. pixel (z-depth) should be used to find the blur direction & strength applied in the compositing package.

Shadow Maps

Controls whether shadow maps are rendered with or w/o motion blur.

Sub-Frame Accuracy

When this is switched on, Affogato will query data from XSI at sub-frame times. This may cause problems if animation wasn't prepared for this and curves overshoot in-between frames. In such a case, simply make sure sub-frame accuracy is switched off.

On the other hand, if a scene has been carefully prepared to avoid aforementioned problem, sub-frame accuracy will make motion blur more accurate at render time. It yields no speed penality once the data has been acquired from XSI.

When this is switched off, Affogato will ensure that the first and last motion sample will always lie on an integer frame. Read: if the number of Motion Segments is exactly 1 for both Transformation and Deformation, Affogato will query data at integer frames only.

Motion Segments higher than 1 will cause data to be queried at sub-frames again. However, the first and last motion sample taken will always be guaranteed to lie on an integer frame if this global is switched off.

Warning: In the special case of Sub-Frame Accuracy being switched off and Shutter Timing being set to Center on Frame, the current frame data will only get exported if the number of Motion Segments is exactly 2! If the number of Motion Segments is 1 and Sub-Frame Accuracy is switched off, the data is acquired from the frame before the current and the frame after the current but not the current frame.

Tip: One can use this 'flaw' together with setting the shutter angle through scripting to values higher than 360 to get 'impossible' motion blur. This might come handy for certain baking applications, e.g. footstep maps.

Shutter

Timing

Sets the open and closing timing of the camera's shutter in respect to a frame.

Open on Frame

The shutter interval is <math>\bigg[frame..{frame+{Shutter Angle\over360}}\bigg]</math>.

For example, if the camera's Shutter Angle is 144, for frame 10, the shutter opens at 10.0 and closes at 10.4.

Center on Frame

The shutter interval is <math>\bigg[{frame-{Shutter Angle\over720}}..{frame+{Shutter Angle\over720}}\bigg]</math>.

For example, if the camera's Shutter Angle is 144, for frame 10, the shutter opens at 9.8 and closes at 10.2.

Center Between Frames

The shutter interval is <math>\bigg[{frame+{1\over2}-{Shutter Angle\over720}}..{frame+{1\over2}+{Shutter Angle\over720}}\bigg]</math>.

For example, if the camera's Shutter Angle is 144, for frame 10, the shutter opens at 10.3 and closes at 10.7.

Close on Next Frame

The shutter interval is <math>\bigg[{frame+1-{Shutter Angle\over360}}..frame+1\bigg]</math>.

For example, if the camera's Shutter Angle is 144, for frame 10, the shutter opens at 10.6 and closes at 11.0.

Configuration

Moving

The shutter gets the values relative to the current frame.

Stationary

The shutter gets the values relative to Shutter Offset.

Offset

A time offset added to the shutter.

Angle

The duration in degrees for which the shutter is open. 360 degress equals a full frame.

Warning: Setting this to 0 turns motion blur rendering off. Motion data will still be written out/send to the renderer though! So unless you intend to do something special, it is advisable to set the Motion Blur... options to off instead, to switch motion blur off.

Motion Factor

The quality vs. speed tradeoff applied to shading quality of motion-blurred geometry.

Read: the higher this value, the lesss shading detail you get in areas of the frame that have motion-blurred geometry in them.

In a REYES renderer (as e.g. 3Delight or PRMan), Shading Rate is multiplied by the value of Motion Factor for every 16 pixels a µ-polygon moves in screen space per frame:

Actual Shading Rate = Shading Rate * max( 1, Motion Factor * ( Distance Moved / 16 ) )

Tip: Using this it is possible to hide shader aliasing (which usually can be credited to the shader writer's laziness, inaptitude or crude production reality: aka lack of time) in motion blur and still have insanely low shading rates (like 0.1) to start with.

Sample Motion

Whether to actually sample motion blur. Switching this off will calculate motion blur but not render it.

This is e.g. useful to render a motion vector pass for post motion blur in a 2D compositing application.

Motion Segments

The number of segments per-frame to approximate an object's motion. For people used to the term motion samples: <math>Motion Samples=Motion Segments+1</math>.

Warning: Modern REYES renderers shade at each motion segment. In a scene where shader evaluation makes up a major part of the render time, increasing motion segments might literally multiply render time by the resp. value.

Transformation

The number of segments per-frame to approximate the object's motion due to transformation.

Setting this to 0 switches transformation motion blur off.

Deformation

The number of segments per-frame to approximate the object's motion due to deformation.

Setting this to 0 switches deformation motion blur off.