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DoF artifacts during quick camera moves in 3D
Hey all,
I’m doing a 3D motion graphics project in After Effects and am having some unpleasant artifacts popping up when I have depth-of-field enabled on my 3D camera along with motion blur. I’m moving the camera quickly in towards a subject for a “detail” view, and then flying it back out again. Unfortunately, when I turn DoF on (which I want, especially when up close, to isolate certain elements) I get this little rows of white & colored “error” pixels. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason as to when they occur—they’re only present in a few frames during the move.. Turning DoF off causes them to disappear entirely. I thought it might have to do with the focus plane intersecting the layers in the comp, but playing with it doesn’t have a consistent effect; sometimes it helps, other times it doesn’t. Any idea on how I can avoid this? I’ve attached a couple images that illustrate the problem. I see this both in the preview and in rendered output.
EDIT: I should’ve mentioned I’m also adjusting the aperture and focus distance during these camera moves to keep the intended items in focus (even though they’re being motion blurred).
Thanks,
Matt -
8 Replies
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It looks like you may have OpenGL on- if that is so, turn it off.
If that does not work, see if the error still shows up when you turn Motion Blur off (you can always use CC Force Motion Blur on the rendered animation for a second pass).Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist -
My first thought was OpenGL too, but this occurs even in best quality renders (which all have “Use Open GL Renderer” unchecked by default), not just in the Preview window (where, indeed, OpenGL IS on, at least during interactions). Tests I just ran indicate that the problem persists even with motion blur turned off (but DoF still on) during the quick camera moves.
I guess in a pinch I could render the problematic bits twice, once with DoF on and once with it off, and just go in and paint out the individual bad pixels, which would probably be good enough that no one would notice (especially once this video is compressed and put up on the web). But I’d rather not, if I can avoid it.
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Do the artifacts show up in the RAM preview or only once rendered?
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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They appear in both. If I RAM preview at half resolution, they are still there, just larger pixels obviously.
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What happens if you lower the depth of field amount?
What version of AE? If 5.5, have you messed with the highlight and other dof settings?
Also, have you updated your AE with the latest updates?
– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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The amount as in the “blur percentage?” Not sure, I’ll give it a shot. Adjusting aperture and focus distance don’t seem to make much of a difference though (the only directly DoF-related settings I was animating).
I have AE 5.5, didn’t mess with the highlight settings. As far as I’m aware I have the latest updates; Adobe Updater certainly seems to think so anyway.
Due to time constraints I ended up just rendering the video twice, once with DoF enabled on all cameras and once with it off, and then just went in and masked out the few times the mess showed up. I’ll keep playing, though, see if I can come up with a real solution.
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I know it’s been a year and Andrew Kramer has made some bug fixes and such but I just troubleshot this on my end and found that the “Pixel Blur” Setting Inside of Element 3D under Render Settings>Depth of Field> was what was causing the artifacts.
I simply used Continuous or Preview Blur while working and Multi Pass(Slower) for rendering and that worked perfectly for me.
Let me know if this helped any.
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Thanks Jared. That really solved the problem for me. Looks like in Element 3D 1.5 pixel blur still gives those errors.
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