[Released] Camera View Optimizer [Commercial]

mavante

Callidus Simia said:

You are correct in your conclussion that this tool can only be used for still image renders. This current version (which at the time of writing is 1.0.2) is not designed to work with animated cameras and this is a feature might  be coded in a future version as a possible addon.

As you rightly point out, there is no mention of animated cameras in this thread, nor is there any mention in the accompanying manual and that is because I initially thought that there was no need to state that fact. However,  I think that your point does makes sense, and I will add a disclaimer at the bottom of the description of the product in this thread.

Thanks for the info. I wasn't finding fault, by any means; when I first saw this, I thought, "Finally! Something that might help us poor neglected DS animators speed things up that doesn't require degrading the geometry so much it becomes cartoonish!" 

It's very heartening to hear you say that support for a moving camera might turn up at some point. I realize it could be very tricky. But then I thought that if it can do it for a single frame prior to rendering, then the same operation theoretically could be run for each frame in a render-to-image-sequence. I guess you'd have to be able to force DS to pause the rendering between each frame long enought for the script to do the necessary calculations, and I don't know if there are any hooks in DS that would allow you to accomplish that.

In any case, it's a great product as-is for those who work with still images. I appreciate your responding.

Leonides02

Callidus Simia:

I've been using this tool extensively, but I'm now encountering trouble on a particular scene. Specifically, it's deleting objects which are in view of the camera.

I never saw a response on whether the script doesn't work on any camera that isn't set to the default 65mm?

Thanks.

barbult

Leonides02 said:

Callidus Simia:

I've been using this tool extensively, but I'm now encountering trouble on a particular scene. Specifically, it's deleting objects which are in view of the camera.

I never saw a response on whether the script doesn't work on any camera that isn't set to the default 65mm?

Thanks.

I have  trouble with it when using a wide angle camera. It would be nice to get an official answer and a fix.

Callidus Simia

Leonides02 said:

Callidus Simia:

I've been using this tool extensively, but I'm now encountering trouble on a particular scene. Specifically, it's deleting objects which are in view of the camera.

I never saw a response on whether the script doesn't work on any camera that isn't set to the default 65mm?

Thanks.

 

Apologies for the delay in answering this but the forum notifications seem to have stopped working for me and I'm only seeing this now.

In reality it really shouldn't matter what type of camera is being used and I've tested it extensively with a wide range of figures. However I will not exclude the fact that a combination of camera settings could possibly result in incorrect classification of object positioning

Can you save your camera as a DUF and send it to me via a PM ? In this way I'll hopefully be able to reproduce the edge case that is causing the deletion.

Thank you.

K.

Callidus Simia

barbult said:

 

I have  trouble with it when using a wide angle camera. It would be nice to get an official answer and a fix.

Do you have the same issue as reported by Leonides02 i.e. objects being deleted by the tool when in front of a wide angle camera ?

K.

gitika1

I would be interested in the Leonides02 and Barbult responses.  I had the product in my cart, then read their posts.  90% of what I create is using a wide angle camera.  I post-poned the purchase.

Callidus Simia

gitika1 said:

I would be interested in the Leonides02 and Barbult responses.  I had the product in my cart, then read their posts.  90% of what I create is using a wide angle camera.  I post-poned the purchase.

Hi,

Whilst I do understand your concern, there is no need to postpone the purchase. You do have a 30 day window to ask Daz for a refund if the product does not function as you expect it to.

As I explained before, the product was tested with a variety of angle values and camera settings (after all, the product has been out for over 10 months, and this is the first time an issue like this has been reported), but there could be an edge case that causes the behaviour outlined above. However its nothing that can't be fixed with a patch :)

Cheers

K

 

 

 

 

 

barbult

One issue I had was resolved. Things I thought should be hidden were not hidden. After closer investigation, I think it is because although the visible object is clearly outside the camera view, the corner of the object's invisible bounding box just sneaks into view. So that is not a bug.

One annoyance I have is that Camera View Optimizer turns ON the visibility of objects in my scene that I had manually turned OFF.

Another problem that I don't really understand occurred with a very large scene with lots of instances. I selected the maximum distance in the Camera View Optimizer and chose to ignore grouped instances. The result was missing instances in the foreground (very very obvious in the render), and the background. Why? It made Camera View Optimizer useless for this scene that really needed it desperately. Renders  and screenshots are attached. The camera focal length was the default 65mm.

Callidus Simia

barbult said:

One issue I had was resolved. Things I thought should be hidden were not hidden. After closer investigation, I think it is because although the visible object is clearly outside the camera view, the corner of the object's invisible bounding box just sneaks into view. So that is not a bug.

That is correct. Determining whether an object should be culled or not happens around the bounding box of the object, not the actual mesh.

One annoyance I have is that Camera View Optimizer turns ON the visibility of objects in my scene that I had manually turned OFF.

This has been mentioned before by a few users and I agree that it can be improved. The next version that I will be releasing will have an option to ignore objects that are already hidden. However the tool is unable to make a distinction on whether the object was hidden by the tool in a previous run or if it was done manually, so one needs to keep that in mind.

As a temporary workaround until I get my new version cleaned up/tested/approved/submitted, one can use the filter settings tab, and enter the names of the objects,sepeated by commas, that have been manually hidden . (Can become tedious if one has a large number of manually hidden objects.)

Another problem that I don't really understand occurred with a very large scene with lots of instances. I selected the maximum distance in the Camera View Optimizer and chose to ignore grouped instances. The result was missing instances in the foreground (very very obvious in the render), and the background. Why? It made Camera View Optimizer useless for this scene that really needed it desperately. Renders  and screenshots are attached. The camera focal length was the default 65mm.

Unfortunately I am unable to determine exactly why this is happening as I dont have enough data, nor access to the scene itself, but this precise situation where a user does not understand why an object was hidden/left alone has been anticipated, hence the presence of the Optimization Results tab. Click on the tab, find/scoll down to the  the grouped instances that were inexplicably hidden, and look at the reason given. That should be a good enough starting point to figuring out what's going on.

 

Hope this helps.

K.  

ee_hee269

Would it be possible for a small update for the distance slider to have a percentage based value?

jjoyner

Hello.  I just discovered this product yesterday via a forum post on another topic.  I've wanted a product for quite a while that does what Camera View Optimizer does.  Has Camera View Optimizer been updated recently?

Callidus Simia

jjoyner said:

Hello.  I just discovered this product yesterday via a forum post on another topic.  I've wanted a product for quite a while that does what Camera View Optimizer does.  Has Camera View Optimizer been updated recently?

I do have plans to update this product in the future but I don't have an ETA for it

jjoyner

OK.  Thanks,

barbult

What a surprise to see you back here after nearly 3 years!

soulstorm.paradox

Does this work with Manfriday's render queue? Like, if I have 8 cameras in a busy scene, will it hide Characters X Y and Z when Camera 1 is rendering, then show X Y and Z but hide characters A B and C when Camera 2 is rendering?

Callidus Simia

Short answer : No 

Long answer : The tool does not have any way of communicating with "Render Queue" so it is unable to determine which camera is the rendering camera. Camera selecting is a manual process by the user. 
 

Hope this helps 

K