To Flare, or not to Flare??

[The Trickster]

That is the question!

Whats peeps opinions on Lens flare? I have heard it been cussed at within the Viz community! I wouldn't normally use it but thought it looked better on this job with the metal finish.

I would like to here peeps opinions on this.

WITH

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/289/cam01lf645x5778bd.jpg

WITHOUT

http://img334.imageshack.us/img334/1281/cam01645x5770hs.jpg

[arqjuan]

Hi

I like with flare but try to move it to the corner wiindow because in the fachade the flare seems strange

Hope that help.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

personally, i wouldn't use a lens flare unless you are looking towards the sun.

[STRAT]

aye. i'd only sanction one if it's absolutely appropriate. 95% of times it isn't.

[Ernest Burden III]

Lens flare = bad

 

Why would we want to mimick the worst of photography? The more you spend on a lens the less flare you will get.

 

Lens flare = bad

 

repeat until learned

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

aye. i'd only sanction one if it's absolutely appropriate. 95% of times it isn't.

 

post # 4,000 even! ...although by the time you read this you will probably be on 4,029

[The Trickster]

He he

Lens flare = Bad.....Repeat until learned.......I like it!

 

But if it happens in photography why not? I thought i might get this reaction but its interesting to know why you would not use it.

 

p.s - Post 50 - watch out Strat im catching you up!

[dbarc]

Lens flare = bad

Why would we want to mimick the worst of photography? The more you spend on a lens the less flare you will get.

Lens flare = bad

repeat until learned

 

Lens flare as in the artefact caused by light bouncing around inside cheap lens optics is bad but a nice highlight off the sun where appropriate can be good. Worth making the disticntion as sometimes the two get grouped together.

 

What is shown in your image Trickster could be the second with a little work. At the moment the problem with it is that it just doesn't look right. Google some photos with sun highlights in and try to work out what's going on visually. For instance, the area of sky around the sun will also be much brighter and this isn't reflected (pardon the pun) in adjacent glass.

[arqjuan]

Maybe you are right lensflare=bad, but remember the client has the last word and they (generally) like all special effects in order to make a fantastic render (people, cars, trees, birds, lens effects, etc), sometimes we (3d artist) try to avoyd some stuffs because they aren´t fit well in the scene, I tell you this because I have a clients that want put some things that has no logic explanation , so think about what would like to your client and that is the answer to your cuestion.

PS. Try to know your enemy (client)

[IC]

Lens flare = bad

Lens flare = bad

repeat until learned

 

Is that bad in a Michael Jackson stylee or just plain old bad?

[Ernest Burden III]

Is that bad in a Michael Jackson stylee or just plain old bad?

 

Michael Jackson = freak

 

Now is that 'plain old bizarre', or the Rick James freak?

 

 

But if it happens in photography why not?

 

Because its a bug, not a feature.

 

How about we add barrel distortion, out-of-focus, light leaks, shots not level, visible grain (well, um) and finished images that lose their magenta steadily over time? Oh, and the occasional finger in the shot, plus ill-timed trucks blocking our subjects. Never do an image that would not be physically possible to shoot without removing walls. And every 36 images you will be forced to wait while you 'reload' your compluter.

 

Why immitate photography?

[The Trickster]

LOL.

 

Ok point taken.

 

Ernest = Point taken.

[dbarc]

Just to illustrate my point - I think what is shown on your image is potentially a characteristic of the material - not a lens flare!

[The Trickster]

Yes, i get you dbarc. Its like a flare but without the rings right?

 

So where on the rendering do you think the flare should be? I tried to place it near to where my direct light was burning up on the copper cladding. Were to me it looked like you would get a slight blur and flare.

[dbarc]

Yes, i get you dbarc. Its like a flare but without the rings right?

So where on the rendering do you think the flare should be? I tried to place it near to where my direct light was burning up on the copper cladding. Were to me it looked like you would get a slight blur and flare.

 

Looking at the specular, it seems about right to me. Are you using an HDRI for sky refs? If so, make sure it's rotated to the same position as your sun and the surrounding materials and glass should start to pick up the correct brightness. At the moment, the flare stands out too much. Also as the flare gets less bright towards the edge, you would probably see less reflective areas of the copper blocking it out a bit.. That may help the realism.

 

Edit: to be honest I didn't see the rings - yep they're just plain evil

[Jeff Mottle]

I for one HATE and despise lens flares and IMHO should never be used in an architectural visualzation. You will notice very images with lens flares make it into the CGA image galleries.

[bjornkn]

Interesting thread

Why is it that some of the traditional photo shortcomings are considered good while others are bad?

Grain is now considered good (?) in CG, but lens flares are not?

DOF blur is considered good, and so is Motion blur, although both could be considered shortcomings of the camera/film technology?

What is it really we are trying to mimic? Perceived reality or photography?

I have nothing against lens flares, although I never use it myself.

In those two images I have more problems with accepting the blurred cars and the perspective corrected lens, although I know that a lot people like to have parallel vertical lines, even though neither camera nor eye will see it like that.

[STRAT]

Interesting thread

Why is it that some of the traditional photo shortcomings are considered good while others are bad?

Grain is now considered good (?) in CG, but lens flares are not?

DOF blur is considered good, and so is Motion blur, although both could be considered shortcomings of the camera/film technology?

What is it really we are trying to mimic? Perceived reality or photography?

I have nothing against lens flares, although I never use it myself.

In those two images I have more problems with accepting the blurred cars and the perspective corrected lens, although I know that a lot people like to have parallel vertical lines, even though neither camera nor eye will see it like that.

 

yup. true.

 

i think these camera effects look good, but only when used absolutely properly and appropriately.

 

i like lense flairs, DOF, parallax, grain etc etc, but ONLY when used correctly. for instance, most visualisers kill images with incorrect use of DOF imo, but then, peeps love it.

 

it's all opinion.

[dbarc]

Interesting thread

Why is it that some of the traditional photo shortcomings are considered good while others are bad?

Grain is now considered good (?) in CG, but lens flares are not?

DOF blur is considered good, and so is Motion blur, although both could be considered shortcomings of the camera/film technology?

What is it really we are trying to mimic? Perceived reality or photography?

I have nothing against lens flares, although I never use it myself.

In those two images I have more problems with accepting the blurred cars and the perspective corrected lens, although I know that a lot people like to have parallel vertical lines, even though neither camera nor eye will see it like that.

 

I think most of the 'shortcomings' which are deemed acceptable are actually quite similar to those found in the human eye anyway- DoF, motion blur definitely are. Perspective correction .. - well that is the same as looking directly towards the horizon. Also when you look up at a building, your brain will automatically compensate and tell you those converging lines are in fact vertical whereas looking at a flat image the effect often just looks like distortion.

 

Although not exactly the same, you do get a natural lens flare when the sun enters your field of vision which is why you don't dismiss it out of hand when you see it used well. I suppose another way of looking at it (being devils advocate here) is that an awful lot of our experience these days is through the lens of a camera be it telly or film so camera lens flare has become a natural part of seeing...

[bjornkn]

I think this has a lot to do with what we're used to see in photos and film. The way my eyes perceive DOF is definitely very different from the way it looks in photos and CG-DOF. It's not blurred at all, but looks more like a low quality CG DOF with a lot of visibly overlapping images. I don't think there has ever been made a painting with DOF, at least not before the photography was invented. Why should they? When they painted the foreground they would of course focus their eyes on that instead of using the same focus as when painting the middle and background.

It's a bit like the way old movies tried to make us believe that we were looking through binoculars by simply placing a binocular mask in front of the images. It works because we know the "code", although it's far from how the eyes see it when looking through binoculars. IMO DOF works the same way - because we know the "code" from photos.

 

I find that "eye flares" are actually much more powerful in real life than what is used in CG. It tends to block out everything else. AFAIK sun flares were never really used in art before the camera was invented, even though the eyes do see them?

I really have nothing against any "trick" as long as it looks good and serves its purpose

Attached is a small atmospheric experiment rendered in Vue. I like the image with its lens flare, but I never sent it to the client, because it doesn't serve its purpose, which was to sell apartments in the building on top of the hill...

[dbarc]

That's a cool image and a good use of flare - I've no problem with it.

 

I have no idea why natural properties of the eye such as DoF were rarely represented in traditional art before cameras, CGI etc. It's like they revealed these properties which had always been there but were hidden by the brain automatically correcting them out.

[bjornkn]

Isn't the question rather if they had really been there all the time, or if they just appeared to be there because the camera, when it was invented, was unable to focus on everything at the same time? When we stand in a landscape and look at different objects surrounding us the eye automatically focuses on what we look at, just like in a painting or a CGI without DOF?

Perspective OTOH was a discovery done in the renaissance AFAIK. Suddenly they discovered that all parallel horizontal lines would meet exactly in one point at the horizon, no matter if they were above the horizon or below (a standard 1 or 2 point perspective). And that whenever the horizon was not in the middle of the view the same thing would happen vertically (a 3 point perspective). These discoveries were confirmed as "true" when the camera arrived, while DOF was never discovered before the camera "proved" it?

Painters have rejected the perspective as a must more than 100 years ago, and we do the same today by perspective correcting images to make all verticals render parallel? Is this because it traditionally was much easier to draw a perspective of a building if you only used 2-point perspective, and that you could more easily take and compare measurements from the drawing?

BTW, my favourite quote is by the Japanese master potter Shoji Hamada and goes something like "It took me 10 years to learn how to make pottery, and 20 years to forget it"

Which translates to : "It's good to learn to say no to lens flares - as long as you can forget that rule later"

 

I guess this is starting to get quite OT though...

[dbarc]

I would say just through the science of optics it must have always been there. The optics of the eye are essentially the same as a camera and DoF is an important part of our depth perception. The brain just does a bit of post-production to combine all the in-focus stuff as your eyes dart around. So maybe cameras just made more evident the real image firing off your optic nerve before the brainshopped end result!

 

With an image, you sometimes want the viewer to perceive the whole 'landscape' as stood in the midst of it, and other times you are recording a moment in time and simulate a particular focus in the viewer and I guess that is when you would mimic DoF.

 

All Interesting stuff

[wilky9]

I went to school with this guy who would use lens flares in every project he did. We eventually broke him of that habit, and he ended up producing some of the best work in the class.

Speaking of creating reality, I wear glasses, so I'm going to render everything in focus in the middle of the screen, and everything really blurry around the edges. Ooh, and the reflections of the environment on my cheap glasses! It's all in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I just hope the beholder has better eyes than me.

[Christopher Nichols]

I know that I am VERY late to this post, but maybe I can jump in.

 

Lens flares are fine, if they are done correctly. PS lens flares sucks and look fake. So when people say lens flar bad. I agree because most lens flares look fake and bad. If you are goign to do a lens flare, you need to study what the lense is doing and what kinf od lense you are using. And with this image, we have a real problem...

 

What disturbs me the most about that image is the EXTREEM perspective "correction" done on the image. The top floor looks 3 times bigger then the bottom floor. That lense is SO wide, that there is NO way you would get straight lines from it, even with a perspective correction lense. Plus, if you had to distort the image that much, the lense flare would NOT be round like that.

 

That image is a perfect example of why I think that CG perspective correction looks so wrong...