Photographer - Camera Exposure, White Balance, Autofocus, Physical Lights, Bokeh, Render Queue

Yes it can save your renders incrementally. If you set your output format to multilayer OpenEXR, it will save your render layers and passes.
If you want to save them to another format, the best is to set up a File Output node in your compositing.

Please watch the video in this post to see how the Render Queue works.

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In the init.py, comment out lines 80 to 83.
In the render_queue.py, comment out lines 231,232,241,242.

I can probably gather everything in one place in the future, not sure if it’s worth adding an add-on preference for it… Does it bother you that much to have the panel in these layouts?

EDIT: Nevermind, I added the option in the preferences, will be in the next version.

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Thank you very much, I have a large number of addons.
Therefore, panel management is very important for me.
For example, Photographer is under “View”.
I just don’t need the panel in so many places.
But are you sure that in “render_queue.py” the lines “231,232,241,242” are meant? For me it looks more like “221,222,223,224” and “231,232,233,234”. 241 and 242 do not exist at all. Normally the panels are registered with “bl_category”, so I had not found them.
But in Preferencens it is of course easier.

Ha yeah, you are right, I gave you the lines of the upcoming version, sorry about that.

Just wait for a couple more days and you’ll be able to disable these panels :slight_smile:

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@jcfnav @G-B
Damn, you can actually make a material transparent in Solid view! Focus plane debug incoming.

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So I have a focus plane that works really well, but I have to push back the next release, because I am using drivers, and adding drivers through the add-on makes Blender super unstable and constantly crashing for weird reasons (like changing the “Show in Viewport” for the driven object in the object properties).
Tried to get help from devtalk but no luck, so if anyone has a clue, let me know.

Hi Chafouin,
I really like your addon, thank you very much!
Sorry, I cannot help with the focus plane problem, I have instead a small feature request:
If a switch betwen different cameras in the Outliner (just selecting one of them) and I look at the Properties panel I can see changing the properties for each camera, even if i don’t make the selected as Active camera.
Doing the same from the Sidebar panel does not take effect, unless I make the camera Active.
Would it be possible to correct this? When I have a lot of cameras in the scene I like to check the different setting of each one, without changing the view.
Thank you!
Ciro

Unfortunately… this is by design, and I don’t think this will change :frowning:
The reason is that it would be very confusing to change your photographer camera settings and not see effects on the viewport directly.
The camera property panel is already doing that, so I prefer to keep both behaviors instead of getting rid of one entirely.

Small number, but still a big update:

Version 3.5.1:

  • Added Preset systems to Exposure and Resolution panels
    image

  • Added Lumens per square meter for Area lights. This can be useful to replicate LED strip lights brightness values provided by manufacturers and maintain brightness while scaling the area light. This should NOT be confused with Lux, which represents lighting brightness that hits a surface.

  • Added Preference option: Camera Default Passepartout and Composition Guides for new cameras

  • Added Passepartout to add-on panel for quicker access

  • Added Preference option: Add AF and Lock Camera to view Header buttons separately @G-B

  • Added Preference option: Hide Photographer panel from Image and Node editor views @MarioPeper

  • Add-on preferences overall improvements (no need to restart Blender anymore)

  • Fixed AF-C that got broken in latest version

Focus plane will come with the next release!

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Ok, I understand, thanks anyway!
Ciro

Thanks again, works great.

Version 3.6 is out!

  • New: Focus Plane
    focusplane

  • Reorganized UI with Depth of Field Panel
    image

Youtube video is coming soon, but the feature is pretty self-explanatory. Only caveat is to turn off the Focus Plane before deleting a camera, or the focus plane won’t be deleted with it. Alternatively, you can “Delete Hierarchy” of the camera in the Outliner, or simply use the Camera List delete button in the Photographer panel.

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The DOF panel does not follow the the other panel preferences. I changed it myself in line 117 in “camera_panel.py” to bl_category = ‘View’. Where View is the desired panel name.
Only if there is someone else who lives outside the preferences. :rofl:
P.S. First make a copy of the file!!!


@chafouin works great with blender-dof-utils >hint<

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Will fix it ASAP. There are so many settings now that I easily forget :sweat_smile:

EDIT: 3.6.1 is out with the UI fix of the issue reported by @MarioPeper.
Also just fixed a versioning mistake, please redownload if you encounter any issue. Sorry for the inconvenience.

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I’ve finally bought your addon (sorry but using BlenderMarket where I was able to use my PayPal wallet without any CC involved) and I’ve tried your focus plane.
First of all it’s a nice feature.
Just noticed that the plane is not updated if I use an object as focus target.
The “X” moves itself correctly but the red plane not.
Is it correct? or is it a bug?

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It’s “correct” because the Blender Focus Object feature does not actually update the Focus Distance value.
For now I simply disable the focus plane when you pick your focus target, but I can fix it in the next version.

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Hey Chafouin

superb add-on and packs. Bought them all to support.

One quick question I have. This is in regards to working more with physical lights.

I sofar worked more in an artistic approach aka trusting my eyes (with also needed extra work).

You add-on as well in consunction with the sky add-ons use light values differently.

would it be possible to write a guide?

for example when I hear physical light - real world light values it sounds logical
but what are those for example is already a big problem

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I actually started recording a video tutorial a year ago about the physically-based lighting theory, never got to finish it as I saw others (CG Cookie) releasing good videos about the subject. I might take the time to write down a documentation, but you can read the descriptions of properties leaving your mouse over them, I always try to put the most meaningful information there.

If you are talking about the Physical Starlight and Atmosphere add-on, I’m not sure what they ended up with, they had some issues when using proper intensities. Photographer works fine with Blender’s Nishita sky or LuxCore Sun and Sky.

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3.6.2 is out:

  • Improved: Focus Plane now works with AF-Tracking. It also works if you use a regular Focus Object, you will just have to disable/enable the Focus Plane after updating the Focus Object.

  • Improved: White Balance Picker now works with 2.91. It now updates in real-time in the 3D view, and accuracy has been improved.

  • Changed: White Balance Picker in Image and Node Editor now uses the regular Color Swatch Eyedropper, for better compatibility across versions. It takes two clicks instead of one, but it promises to be more stable until BGL is fully replaced.
    image

  • Improved: AF Tracking and Camera Target are now more stable and won’t create several trackers for the same camera in some situations.

  • Fixed: Camera Target orientation was incorrect in 2.83.

Blender development goes extremely fast, and it’s hard for me to support 3 different versions. I do my best to catch errors, but I will obviously miss some. So please bear with me, I really appreciate when users take the time to report errors, and do my best to fix them as fast as possible!

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Love this addon!

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