The UNC issues is the biggest for me. I get some opportunity to use Blender at Ubisoft in ourpipeline but because of this , I cannot do it smootly. And asking to map network path on all Ubisoftcomputers just "for me" seam to not be a good solution. :) I always want to send a email about thatbut this morning when I see this one , I just take the opportunity to talk about this. :) FBX support for me is a good thing too and need to be more supported. This is the most "supported"format by others softwares so really important for me to export/import stuff between Blenderand others softwares.
Jean - François Gallant Artiste 3D sénior: Éclairage/Généralistewww.pyroevil.com > From: [email protected] > Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 12:57:54 +0100 > To: [email protected] > Subject: [Bf-committers] Blender into a pipeline > > Hi everyone, > > I haven’t been around for a while now, but I had the chance to integrate > Blender in a small part of a recent project in my company for the > matchmoving part (we don’t do much of those where I work now). I have seen > all the progress an new sweet features in it, and I wanted to congratulate > you all for the great work. > > I never really had to integrate Blender into an existing big pipeline, at > least in a real case scenario. By doing so for this project, I got several > bullet points which might be interested to you. Some might look like bugs > to me when it might just be a design decision, so I won’t fill any bug > report for now. > > As for the disclaimer, I didn’t have much time to do a full integration > into our pipeline and didn't had much time to work on it, so you have to > consider this in the following experience I had. But that's also another > good point about blender, being able to work with it in a couple of seconds > after just downloading it, having some file format like fbx which makes > integration easier. I need it to be able to work fast with it, exchange > data with others, work with our infrastructure and in-house tools. > We are using After Effects, 3ds Max, Thinkbox Deadline, FFMpeg, Data > Servers (mostly nothing in local computers), in-house pipelines tools > (shotgun like, lots of automation process, …), Perforce, and so on… > I have been using Blender version 2.9-fd0b104-win64 from 20/01/2014 from > the builder.blender.org > > So here they are : > > > *Start Frame Convention** : * > > This is a tricky part and a bit confusing to be honest. I guess we can do > pretty much what we want with the « Start Frame » and « Offset frame ». Yet > that was really confusing to me, and I didn’t trust myself with that. > Our entire pipeline start at 0 for several reasons, which might sounds > logic or not to you, yet the convention is like so. Works better like that > with FFmpeg, AE, 3ds Max,.. > > The first time, I made sure my timeline was set properly as my Render > settings. > I imported the Movie Clip (which was an image sequence starting at 0), but > didn’t notice the « Start Frame 0 » in the « Footage Panel ». I did my > tracking and when exported it I had a frame offset happening in Max. > > I’m sure all that sounds stupid to most of you and that the solution is > really obvious, again for me not so much. I don’t have time to guess if > what I did is correct or not with the start frame and the offset. I just > need it to work like it should straight away so I can concentrate on the > real work which in this case was the matchmove. > > For the second shoot, I decided it to setup my scene correctly defining > what I thought was correct by setting the start frame at 1 et the offset to > -1 with my timeline to 0. Still today I’m not even sure that was the way to > do it, but it actually revealed some kind of bug. The track panel > (magnified image of the tracker) became unusable. If I clicked in it, > Blender was creating a keyframe at the previous frame, and while dragging > the panel didn’t get updated. > > All that to say, at the end I came back to the default settings, because I > didn’t have time to figured this out and even so would be sure about it. I > told the 3D guy that he would get an offset in the exported file, so he > would have to move the keyframes a bit in 3ds mas > > That is not so good, and makes communication about frame range between 2 > application very hard. > > So I would suggest to have this defined in the preference. So I could > choose by default that all my projects start at the frame I want (usually 0 > or 1 depending of the pipeline) and be sure that blender does all the > tricky stuff for me. > > > > *FBX Export** : * > > THIS IS SO NIIIICCCEEEE to have ! Without this, I don’t know how I would > have possibly used Blender for that project since I needed to export the > camera and some objects. > I haven’t check everything, only what I was interested to which is the > camera and it’s animation as well as a few simple objects (cones, boxes, …) > All got exported well except the scale is totally off. I have no idea why ! > Both Blender and 3Ds Max are setup in Metrics. But if I create a box of > 1,7m in Blender and import it into max, the scene is sooooooo small you > can’t even see it. > I have try to overwrite the importer fbx unit system in Max (trying all > metrics) but I can never get it right. We had to parent all the imported > object to a dummy, and scale it until it looks approximately right. which > is kind of bad when you need to be really precise. > If you need some help with testing, I'm all yours :) > (I believe Max's importer thinks the fbx file is setup in inch, but couldnt > find that in the file. weird...) > > > *UNC path** : * > > Of all, that was probably the biggest pain in the ass. No support for this > is very sad. We are trying to avoid Network Drive for several reasons : > Mostly because if one computer does not have it, nothings works (unc always > does), > also because our render farm does not have it. Deadline have a great > support for Blender out of the box > (*http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/deadline-6-blender/ > <http://www.thinkboxsoftware.com/deadline-6-blender/>*) . > I couldn’t use the render farm because of that, that’s a shame ! Network > Drives only mounts when you are opening a windows session. If you are > running a slave as a windows service, the drives won’t be there. > Yes the farm has some path mapping features to bypass this kind of issue. > But again, didn’t have the time to setup the render farm for that, and we > try to avoid tweaking it in the middle of a production, especially this > kind of features. > > Anyway, missing UNC support a lot :) > > > > *Motion Tracking* > > Not much to say about the 2d tracker or the camera solver, those are really > INCREDIBLE IMO !!! And I had the surprise to find out about the release of > the weighted track, that was perfect for that project. I needed to solve > lots of 3d positions of objects which I couldn’t track really well and > would have affect the camera solve quality ! that was awesome to have, > thanks a lot :) > > Yet here is a few thing I noticed while working with it. > > 2D trackers Colors : > I love giving colors to my trackers, I love the fact that I can see them in > the 3D view. But it’s sad that the 2D tracker does not get the color. It > remains white all the time in MCE :( > Disabling Track : > hard to guess what it will do. especially when tracking backwards. I > understand perfectly how it works in forward, so I can predict it. but when > I do it backwards, the experience is not quite the same. I would love to > select a bunch of frames and disable it as well (which would creates > keyframe at the beginning and end of the selection) > > Tracker Panel : > I understand that what I see in the tracker panel is what the tracker use > to do it’s job, so selecting channels can affect the track and this is > great. But when I do supervised tracking (like tracking frame by frame a > very tiny white dot by hand), I’d like to bump up the brightness / contrast > so I can see it better. It would help me to see what I’m doing. Maybe it > wouldn't have to affect the tracker when it’s tracking by itself. > being able to lock it at the top. I’m scrolling all the time to find some > parameters underneath this panel, (display, tracker parameters, …). but I’d > love to always have this panel on screen no matter what. > Changing the name of the tracker does not update the dopsheet for some > reasons. > > Focal lens : > if you select a camera preset, it get reset every time. > can't animate it this limit a few things. Solving zoom is hard, but > overwriting it could be helpful. For instance : > Shoot A is a wide camera (24mm) it sees a lot of markers > Shoot B is more narrow (70mm) it sees less markers than the Cam A. > Since Blender does not support survey yet a could old technic is to concat > both shoot A and B and give the keyframes in shoot A, so shoot B can > benefits the 3D point solve of Shoot B. Not being able to animate the focal > lens by hand, didn’t let me do that. So I had to align the Cam B by hand > (thanks to the great 3D cursor though) > > 3D markers : > I wish I could render those ! any shape I’m selecting in the property panel > of the 3D view. > The 3D marker to mesh button, does not create the mesh in the camera space, > so it is not really usable. (and I haven’t find how I can choose a shape > for it (sphere, cones) > The cones shape is not really practical. It’s pivot point is centered and > the tip of the cone is facing up. It would be better IMO if the pivot point > was at the tip of the cone, and facing down. > > Create default scene : > I really don’t get this cube in the middle o_O. Is there a good reason for > it ? I don’t see the advantage at all. I would prefer to have it sit on the > floor personally > Having a default material created which does Wireframe + MovieClip > projection by default which I could assign to any object I want would be > perfect !!! I know there is some tricks to create it by using some GLSL > turn on and other stuff, so you only see the front wireframe, yet I can’t > remember how to set it up. I had to do it for that a long time ago : > *https://vimeo.com/33462761 > <https://vimeo.com/33462761>* > > Compositing default nodes : > handy, but a bit messy IMO. You always have to re-arrange them. A > simpler/alternate pipe could be done if distortion is not solved as well > > Distortion : > I managed to work without computing distortion on that project, because it > was very very small and didn’t affect the solve much. Yet if I had, I would > have to re-render distorted plate with some overscan parameter. Maybe it’s > there somewhere but I haven’t find it. > > Set as background does not activate it on camera : > It’s too bad you have to go on the camera to turn it on, while the button > could have done it for you > > 3D stabilisation : > This is really something I’m missing from blender. While stabilizing the > camera path probably could be done via python, I wouldn’t get the new > distorted plate which goes with and this is too bad. Something which was > needed on this project, we will probably do a 2D stab on the final > composite then, but that’s really not the way we wished to do it > Dopsheet : > selection of markers in the view does not update dopsheet selection. > usually the selected marker in dopsheet, does not match the one selected in > the view. > > Timeline : > being able to lock markers would be nice. > Don't allow frame to be selected with mouse, I would love that to work with > the arrow key as well ! > > > Those are all the points I did stumble on. Anyway thanks again for all the > great work > > cheers, > > F. > > > -- > ____________________ > François Tarlier > www.francois-tarlier.com > www.linkedin.com/in/francoistarlier > _______________________________________________ > Bf-committers mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
