Combustion, DOF, RLA, RPF format etc

[alexoctagon]

Hi

I have started doing a few anims and have been trying DOF in LW and in 'post' in the Combustion demo via the RLA format, as I plan to buy Combustion v. soon.

I have read over many of the threads discussing this, but could I just ask a few questions to check a few things:

(See image attached)

1. Lightwaves' DOF is a bit jaggy, even with extreme antialiasing? (see left hand pic)

2. To be able to change Combustions' near/far focus settings in a reasonable manner, you have to scale LW scenes up 100x?

3. When using Combustions' 3D DOF it blurs the objects in focus edges (see middle pic - box blur) as well, due to LW's bad implementation of the 'coverage' feature in RLA/RPF. This is the same effect as using a z-depth alpha channel?

4. Does gaussian blur work with LW RLA/RPF in Combustion? I get a weird result (See right hand pic)

5. At the end of the day, its easier to use Evasions X-DOF filter as it is the best quality? (but obviously need to re-render any changes)

6. Lightwave's exported files' compatibility is the same with Combustion, Digital Fusion and After Effects?


My LW experience is mainly on stills so please excuse any ignorance!

Thanks for any help/advice in advance,

Alex

[bakasaru]

You might try posting on the following Combustion forums as well, if you haven't already.

Combustion Forum at DMN (http://www.dmnforums.com/cgi-bin/displaywwugindex.fcgi?forum=discreet_combustion&endday=30&dire=4)

Creative Cow Forum for Combustion (http://www.creativecow.net/index.php?forumid=14)

Hope this helps:)

[alexoctagon]

bakasaru

I took your advice and posted there but unfortunately I just got a 'Discreet' chap who of course doesn't use LWave. I'm a bit stuck on this one...

Alex

[faulknermano]

i saw a pdf somewhere explaining how to use the rpf plugin. i just forget where. i can email it to you (if the file size is small enough).

faulknermano1@yahoo.com

[Red_Oddity]

And while you where screwing about you could also have split your render and composite...
Just write out a depth buffer (might not even be needed in this way but...)
You can do this in 2 ways, by using fog and matted objects, or by just exporting the internal depth buffer.

Render your background and render the front seperatly, this way you won't get those annoying blurred edges (it's just 2d info so there's not one program in the world that can just 'make up/invent' data that's behind the bottle).
By splitting the render you now have the info behind the bottle.

Just apply DOF in composite to both layers (FG and BG renders) and your basically done.

note: in AFX you can even cheat DOF by using the Smart blur in conjuction with a depth channel (the plugin need depth info)

note2: USE 16 BIT DATA FOR DEPTH BUFFERS (it beats the 256 steps you get in 8bit, now you'll have 65535 steps so you'll have so much info to tweak even very small differneces in the DOF)

[Red_Oddity]

The RPF info PDF is on the download page of Newtek Lightwave...

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/downloads/misc/RPF.pdf