Blender 2.7* “Hacking the Viewport”
Carl Irwin is producing a fantastic tutorial series on speeding up your production using viewport rendering. Watch this!
A tutorial series that will focus on utilizing the viewport and VSE as compositing and final render tools. The footage shows a sample project in final render, a look at the viewport, a direct viewport render, a VSE render and the final post-process project again.
Episode 1: Overview
This is an “Overview” of the tutorial series. Topics discussed:
- Defining “Hacking”
- Identifying Limitations
- General Discussion of Techniques
Episode 2: Layers of Space: “A Nebulous Tutorial”
- Creating a space scene with Stars. Nebulae and Lens Flare effects in one scene
- Texture/material sources and alterations for the project
- Multiple transparency modes in GLSL
- A hack for resetting the draw order of assets
- Simple animation settings
- A hack for cheating anti aliasing in the VSE
- A hack for cheating motion blur on moderate to slow moving camera moves.
Episode 3: Keyed Footage: “Boom Boom Pow”
- Alpha channel enabled video
- Free video asset resources
- Alpha enabled video asset compositing in the viewport
- Asset color correction
- Blur/Glow effects hack
- New GLSL Tools addon
- Recalculate Draw Order Tool
Footage Crate (Free video assets): footagecrate.com
Episode 4: Quick Render Layers: “Thanks… I’ll Pass”
- Using OpenGL Viewport rendering to quickly generate render passes.
- Simple compositing of OpenGL render passes in the VSE.
- Unconventional use of new Gooseberry Project viewport enhancements (Depth of Field and Ambient Occlusion).
- Using and working around limitations of the Gaussian Blur effect in the VSE.
Episode 5: Conventional Materials: “A New Cell Plan”
- Object Duplication and Animation
- Conventional Material Compositing
- “Gooseberry” Build Ambient Occlusion and Depth of Field
- Using the “Mist” Material Feature
- “Quick & Dirty” Sub Surface Scattering Material Composite Trick
- MatCap Usage and Resources (Captured Materials)
- A Return to Viewport Only Rendering (No Passes)
Hey!
you are Blenders 3d Open GL-GLSL Master!
I like the Videos, interesting Technics and great explanation.!
i like very much the video with the Truck on the Highway
Thanks
Great Job!
nice way to show what is possible. But i think its much better to get a better computer to render in cycles. Because with this kind of old school game graphics you cannot earn money in daily business. Today the majority of the viewers around the globe see exactly what kind of quality the vfx have.
All the extra work you have to done by working that way is time that you waste. Its faster to buy a better computer and push the render button. because you could get all the layers you want in a very short amount of time….
Your workflow is a very good way to build “game graphics looking images” and for that its very nice.
So have to say good job.
But you don’t always want (or need) to make a complete environment for a renderer such as cycles. It can be faster and more efficient to make some sort of matte painting instead. That’s where cycles fails and GLSL succeeds.
Sorry but what in the hell are you talking about?^^ That is absolutely wrong. I could might believe that you never worked with cycles? Check out all the features of cycles and you will see that your comment is wrong….
Why? For production (lets pretent that it’s only limited to blender) for a shot of a landscape, there are two options, spend weeks making it in 3D and then rendering it with an hour a frame (or something really high like that), or use GLSL for rendering and make a matte painting and have it be seconds or (for a really complex shot) minutes per frame. I think the latter is better unless you need to have the enviroment there for nearly every shot, or you need closeups. When doing things for fun, a proper 3D environment can also just be more fun.
As for using cycles, It’s my default in my startup .blend file. It’s basically all I’ve ever used. You can see what I’ve done with it here (go to the last page to see the best stuff):
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?343746-2005-TARDIS-Interior&highlight=
It’s not incredible, but It shows that I know how to use the rendering engine.
look here some of my work: https://vimeo.com/111754012
I can tell you one Frame in 2 K ( the nukeshot ) 1 – 2 min a frame. I don’t where you get hours for rendering? Cycles on GPU is so fast you render high quality images in less than 3 minutes. I got only one 750 TI OC from Asus nothing special.
for game style graphic your workflow is nice, but not for high quality imagery. Sorry its my point of view. But i have to say your tutorials showed me thing that i’ve dont know before. So thanks for you tutorials ..
This is a demonstration of what is possible to achieve with the limited viewport in Blender TODAY, now imagine what will be possible in a few years.
This type of rendering is the trend and the future, will replace tools like Vray, Cycles, bringing the same results without spending HOURS to render 1 second animation.
I could say more, but want an example? The opening of the Star Trek movie was done in After Effects using a plugin called Element 3D, everything was done with this kind of sorcery… if you want to know more: 1:50 – youtu.be/AYzGhNkNBWs
Now imagine what the future holds o/
Looks nice. but indeed you would be faster with cycles by creating the same thing in blender. i believe it and its my opinion.
I don’t know how you missed the point of the tutorial entirely. Not everyone’s computer can render such complex scenes so fast in Cycles. Before I upgraded my rig, it took 10 minutes to render a single frame of Suzanne in a 4 wall room using just the standard diffuse materials. I didn’t make a serious switch to Cycles til just this year (because it was useless to me compared to BI before I upgraded) Needless to say, this method is very needed.
I don’t think you understand what I’m trying to tell you. The reason this is better is because you get it in realtime and you don’t spend weeks making all the assets. You basically make a few assets in 3D (if needed) and composite everything together.
I doubt I’ll be able to get you to understand my reasoning. I’m just going to stop arguing over this topic as it’s not really very important.
Sorry to say. You dont understand what i’ve said. i think its a good idea to make title sequences or even Game Looking Animations. Maybe Shots with objects in far distances. i never said that this is bad. I only said, that i doubt that this would work in High quality VFX stuff. 3D Elements in After FX is very good indeed. But same problem here. You need alot of time by building the setup to get a picture done in seconds. If you would work with cycles you need less man power to create a big scene with special Open GL graphic, but you need to render alot longer. not hours but minutes instead of seconds. The problem is, a possible client dont pay for less than hollywood quality. So i think its better to render in cycles.
The argument a good maschine is not payable i can only tell you. I got only one machine A i7 16GB of Ram a 750Ti from Nvidia. The whole setup cost only 400 Euros so that means around 500 Dollars. That is nothing… Sorry to say. But you dont need a big computer you only need a good graphic card. a 750Ti OC cost around 75 Euro/ 100 Dollars. when you work with this kind of Open GL you need a good working graphic card too. So.. what i want to say is the for Quick compositions and quick title sequences its good. But my personal opinion is that you will get better images and better quality to use this way of rendering only for title sequences or far distance assets. But i accept your opinion and will close my discussion. But overall the client decide what he would pay and what not. So overall its a nice way to do animations.
Matte Painting is the most misunderstand discipline in vfx. And Alexander is here to prove it.
Great great series of tutorials ! thank you
Thank you for the kind words. The point of all of this is to push the
limits on the GLSL capabilities (which are currently under developed,
with respect to function). This is to demonstrate the potential for
blender having an operating mode that is comparable to the contemporary
mindset behind all of the major proprietary compositors. Anyone working
with Nuke, After Effects, etc. for a living is indeed earning money
using “old school” game graphics. Particularly those who are using 3D
asset rendering plugins for those compositors. The difference between the Blender Viewport
and these compositing suites is that the compositors have developed
texturing, material and lighting applications that reap a more realistic
application of OpenGL rendering. Adobe and The Foundry figured this out
a long time ago and people like Andrew Kramer took it much further…
and they are all making a killing.
To the issue of render time, the
claim is that rendering a shadeless image plane (like a
matte painting) in OpenGL will always be faster (a second per high res.
frame) than rendering in any ray traced engine (cycles, bi, yafaray,
mitsuba, povray, luxrender, vray, octane… etc.) with zero loss in
quality… this, of course, is true.
Anyway, I’m glad this got
Blendernationed… I hope people enjoy it… and feel free to make
recommendations for better solutions and results!
Nice to see that this made it to Blendernation. Is it going to be continually updated as a new episode comes out?
I’ll post new episodes when they arrive.
Great tutorials!
Thank you for sharing them with us.
This technique in itself is a nice little gem!
Don’t get me wrong, Cycles is awesome, but I see multiple projects where this technique will come in handy!
Thanks again, and keep them coming!
The objects setup in this set of videos is so inflexible, the author has obviously never have had a manager/director saying (as they always do): “Mmmm, great idea, but can we try the shot from a few different angles?”.
Since there is a lot of non-GLSL / BI specific stuff in the later videos, the series should really be named “Advanced compositing methods for computers that still can’t do Cycles”.
All episodes use OpenGL for all assets. Even VSE compositing can use OpenGL with or without scene strips. Once render passes are made with OpenGL then the method of compositing becomes irrelevant (due to a lack of need for ray traced rendering). And yes, the hacks (like all hacks) in the viewport are inflexible to major camera changes. Much like the effects “hacks” of yesterday (matte paintings on glass) and even the concept of plate photography and chroma screen which bind the film maker to pre planning a shot.
Bad directors/supervisors, with bad or no previz, with no commitment with the team and/or budget and/or schedule love to say that.
They like to start using their creativity once the shot have already a lot of work on top of it.
Unfortunately this “can we try from different angleS” is often common on the industry, but this kind of behaviour also plays a big role on current vfx crisis.
These openGLs tips are hacks. And visual effects is all about hacking the eyes.
Thanks a lot for these tutorials.
Thank you! Outstanding! Amazing! Brilliant!
I don’t see the “Donate” button :) This is worth of paying for such a brilliant work. You must make money on making Blender workshops. You have a talent for that. Not only very useful tricks you talking about, but the way you do it…. Outstanding! Keep up, it’s a good work! One of the best (if not the bestest :) )
Adding to my bookmarks.
Ingenious ideas! I haven’t seen the tutorials yet, but I’m hoping that this will make Blender a more viable option for things like explainer videos and text-heavy animations where one would not need to render it all out painstakingly.
Great tuts. Lots of good information.thanks
Great set of tutorials and technics !
Thank you sir !
Thanks for the great set of tutorials. I just want to share my attempt to mimic projects in http://www.videocopilot.com using “Hacking the Viewport” Techniques:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnNLEG-xibHbYikJz8k8FEMVTRn1u61wP
Apparently, They have done some work on the addon, I don’t have the images as planes option on mine. :D Great tuts, Came at the best time too :D
I am not sure if you are aware of this, But you can also access the Images as planes in the Shift + A Menu as well under Add Mesh.