I just tried and that’s definitely a limitation, I was able to mix the glass with a transparent and you get both 2x distorted reflections and volumes but you also get the non distorted image at 50% opacity so definitely not a good option.
Absolutely, it’s a cool effect but too heavy for current engines, I think it can at least help in studying how to get the effect in a more efficient and hacky way.
That’s what I was hoping for!!! Please feel free to drop me a message whenever you want if I can be of any help in getting this feature in ^^
My ideas are:
-the ‘overscan’ factor(maybe can be hacked to get more image left and right)
-Using a second hidden camera to get more image in the first camera (very similar to how reflections are done in eevee though?)
-A world image stretching independent from cameras (maybe is something similar to the unreal world material you were talking about?)
I’ve been looking at comparisons between anamorphic and spherical lenses with the help of a friend who owns a Sirui 1.33x. I am having trouble to understand “the beautiful changing in field of view/parallax” that you expect. The horizontal FOV is definitely wider, but there is no “parallax” change as long as you leave the camera in the same position. The parallax will only happen if you move your camera closer to the subject if you try to match the horizontal field of view of your spherical lens.
Now you are correct that, by default in Blender, if you expand the horizontal resolution, it will crop the top and bottom. And it makes sense, your camera sensor width is most likely larger than its height, so when changing the image format with a Spherical lens, you are most likely cropping the top and the bottom of the image or hiding it behind a letterbox:
But this is where Anamorphic lenses work differently. It maintains the vertical FOV, and expends the sides. I’ve been trying to come up with a smart operator that would stretch the resolution on the sides when increasing the anamorphic ratio, and it actually works nicely but it’s messing up with the actual render resolution format ratio, because it’s essentially overriding it.
And then noticed that it’s just much easier to set the Sensor Fit to Vertical… This way the Render resolution works as expected, switching from 16:9 to Cinemascope:
Now, Photographer doesn’t support Vertical fit. I will have to do some adjustments there, the problem is that the Image Format, Sensor Width and Height all need to be set up correctly to provide the correct FOV, or there will be reframing when activating the Anamorphic squeeze.
This won’t create the loss of horizontal quality that a squeeze/desqueeze would create, but this is definitely a better WYSIWYG workflow than using the Pixel Aspect Ratio, in my opinion. And you can fake the quality loss in the compositor by adding a squeeze and desqueeze. Two Scale nodes in a row won’t work, it’s smart enough to not lose quality there, but adding a filter node in the middle with a factor of 0 would “apply” the first squeeze. You did render twice the amount of pixels for nothing though…
The ‘Sensor fit’ set to ‘vertical’ that’s what all this was, finally. yah we don’t get some fxs but as you said those are easy things to get in post.
And yes, you are right with the parallax I need to get my camera closer to the subjects thanks to the gained field of view. I think I moved the camera around 1/3 of the distance from the subject, but I don’t know how the exact math would work.
Not a big problem since I like to be able to push the camera in to taste, like I would actually do in real life.
I kept the same settings in photographer using the cinemascope 2.39:1, same output resolution with no scaling involved and the same 131mm lens!!
The more I look at them and the more I like the outcome!! Thank you so much ^^
It basically just need to have ‘vertical’ selected in the sensor fit when using anamorphic. I don’t know if it can be a checkbox in photographer, like ‘vertical anamorphic lock’ ? I think people would still want to be able to deactivate this option if not knowing what is doing.
I’m so happy I want to try this new workflow everywhere sci-fi now
Love the Photograher addon. Have been using it for a long time now. It replaced at least 3 other addons for me.
Loving the controls for the World lighting. Just wish the source folder manager was a bit more sophisticated where Photographer could use pre-generated thumbnails from a separate subfolder or from the same folder but with let’s say _preview suffix.
I’d also love it if Photographer would show only one instance of the hdri map but if it has 2k, 4k, 8k, versions ect. it would be possible to easily switch between different resolutions from the panel.
The Thumbnail Generator coming in the next update will create them in a _thumbnails folder.
I will keep the previous behavior for backwards compatibility.
I’ll add it to my neverending list of feature request
Hello,
I don’t know if this is the right place to ask for help, bu I bought the photographer 4 addon in April. I really love using it but I recently wanted to update it and noticed that the confirmation E-Mail I got back then isn’t in my mails anymore. It would be great if I could get the link to download the updates again. I can provide the transaction code and bill number from my paypal transaction records. I’m really sorry for any inconveniences or if this is the wrong place to ask for help, but I really don’t know what else to do.
Thank you
Photographer didn’t “break” You are using an experimental version of Blender, they are changing the Python API and that can break add-ons compatibility.
The next version will be compatible with Blender 3.0, but there is no guarantee it will stay compatible for long. Please stay on a stable release if you work on important projects.
Why Experimental? Because I won’t be available for the next 3 days, so if something doesn’t work, your only solution will be to revert back to a previous version. I have tested thoroughly the new features on Windows, Blender 2.93 and Blender 3.0, but bugs might have slipped in.
You’ve been warned
Fix compatibility with Blender 3.0.
Fix Render Queue issues on macOS.
Added Generate Thumbnail. Will create PNG thumbnails into a _thumbnails folder for HDRIs that don’t have thumbnails yet. You can copy your own PNG thumbnails in that folder, or next to the HDRIs as before.
Added Refresh HDRI library, to repopulate the menu after adding subfolders or HDRIs.
Added World override per camera. Remember to assign World to each camera, or cameras with no World override will just keep the latest one that was used (similar to other Photographer settings).
Added Lock Vertical FOV for anamorphic camera (Sensor Vertical fit)
Added support for Vertical Sensor Fit, and updated bundled presets accordingly.
Bundled presets will now overwrite installed presets if more recent.
I add photographer camera form add menu but it cannot render current frame or current camera position. I tried it from addon render button but no result. I am using v4.2.0. For render i was using eevee. When I tried to render it always render previous camera position. How can I solve this.
P.S: I tried with clear all my temporary file from temp folder. Nothing changed.
You are using an experimental version of Blender, they are changing the Python API and that can break add-ons compatibility.
