Digital Art Zone

I’ve always done motion blur in postwork. I fiddled with the settings but think I need info to get any results. How do you set up a scene and render in motion blur now?

You need actual motion in your scene, so you have to adjust the pose of whatever it is you want to blur - often that’s just a question of opening the Timeline, setting a keyframe moving to the next frame and moving the item you wish to blur. Then turn on Motion Blur in render settings and render.

Richard, where can we look to find information like this about the new capabilities of 4.5. I’ve heard of things like Geometry Shell, but I have no idea what it is for or how to use it. I’d like to know about instancing, too.

I thought I replyed to this. Hmmm… Thanks for the info, that sounds pretty cool. I’ll have to play with it some.

I’m with Barblut, where do we get the info on all the new features?

As Richard said, you just need two keyframes. I just set a key on frame 1 and another on frame 5. That way, I’ve got a couple frames I can pick from to get the right motion.

Just grab the “thigh” and move it, and voila, you’ve got a quick and cool motion blurred kick for your football/soccer player

You will have to check the “Motion Blur” checkbox in the render settings of course. “Motion samples” is the value defining the quality of the blur ( quite similar to the “pixel samples” value when you’re using depth of field ).
Just know that a high value implies a higher motion blur computation. I strongly suggest to render your scene without the moving part, then re-render the moving part on a background image ( using your previous rendered image as a background maybe ).

Eliminating most transparency/reflection/refraction will speed the process up because the motion blur computation is done on the whole scene and not just the moving part. It will really affect your rendertime, even with a value as low as 16. It does look amazing anyway and it is a welcome feature. You can really get creative with it.

The “motion amount” value allows you to easily tweak the amount of motion blur. The amount of blur is caused by the movement between two frames. The higher the movement/translation/rotation, the stronger the blur. Lower values will lower the motion blur amout while higher values will accentuate it.

I’ve got an example but it is from an unreleased product promo so I can’t show it

BTW, it is interesting to note object motion blur has been implemented but not camera blur. You can still emulate camera blur ( blur induced by the translation/rotation of the camera ) by grouping your whole scene and moving it…

Simulated camera blur by grouping the scene together and translating/rotating it. For those who don’t know about it, DS 4.5 supports groups. Grouping is working like layers. By hiding your group, you’re hiding ALL elements in your group which is very efficient.

Cool. Thanks for the mini tutorial. I can think of many uses for this now.

The product has been released so I can post the image now

I just moved the “Right Shoulder” part to get some motion blur…

Nice. I think I’m going to like this. It will come in handy for some things running around in my head.

I think I’m missing something really obvious about how to make this work. I keep getting these really tiny one-frame blurs, when I get anything at all.

Say I’ve got a timeline sequence of 30 frames of something like a person throwing a baseball. I set a keyframe at frame 20, hoping to capture the entire sweep of the arm between frames 1 and 20. Instead, I’m getting what looks like ONLY frame 20, with a teeny tiny bit of motion blur. What am I doing wrong? What’s the entire set of steps I need to go through to get that big blur?

(Incidentally, another terribly basic question, I’m sure, but: is there any way to completely clear/unanimate a timeline?)

Any help will be much appreciated.

If it moves from frame 0 to 20 and you render frame 20, you only get a little bit of the blur. Frame 10 (i.e. mid-way between start and finish) will have the highest amount of blur.
To clear the timeline select bone on the scene tab, go to Parameters tab options (little triangle followed by lines on the top internal corner) and select Clear Animation and the relevant sub-option. This can now also be achieved by going to Edit menu->Object (or Figure, whichever is appropriate)->Clear Animation->Relevant sub-option.

ReDave - 03 October 2012 04:39 AM

If it moves from frame 0 to 20 and you render frame 20, you only get a little bit of the blur. Frame 10 (i.e. mid-way between start and finish) will have the highest amount of blur.

OK, but in the example I was giving, I was rendering frame 20 of 30. I can see where, since that’s near the end of the motion, it might have a bit less than I expected, but surely there should be a bit more than the tiny amount I’m getting. I’ll try rendering frame 15 and see if that works any better.

To clear the timeline select bone on the scene tab, go to Parameters tab options (little triangle followed by lines on the top internal corner) and select Clear Animation and the relevant sub-option. This can now also be achieved by going to Edit menu->Object (or Figure, whichever is appropriate)->Clear Animation->Relevant sub-option.

Ah, OK. Thanks!