determining motion blur

[Matt McDonald]

I rarely animate projects but have been using some of this holiday downtime to revisit a few old projects. One such project is an animation. I was never please with it because I felt like there was a lot of flickering around the edges due to lack of motion blur.

 

I'm using motion blur under the Camera Effects rollout, I believe that is a Mental Ray specific motion blur but I hope my question will be general enough that anyone can respond.

 

So, I'd like to know how you go about determining how much motion blur to add. When I started this effort I expected to find a mathematical formula which would tell me how much to add but from what I can now tell, it is strictly an artistic endeavor...one which takes hours and hours to render enough frames so that one can make that artistic determination. And then it takes hours and hours again. and again. and again.

 

So I'm curious to hear from others to describe how each of you go about making determinations regarding motion blur.

 

Thanks for the time.

Matt

[Tommy L]

do it in post.

[Matt McDonald]

So animations aren't really my thing but we have after effects and premier and I don't think either have a built in motion blur solution. Do you have a plugin you like to use? Do you render out a velocity pass or anything like that?

 

Still curious to hear from anyone who does it in engine.

[Scott Schroeder]

Another vote for doing it in post. Yes, AE does have a built in motion blur that does a pretty decent job. Doing it in post is just infinity faster for simple architecture camera moves. If you needed motion blur for something such as a helicopter blade or hero object, then just render the blades or object on their own pass with the motion blur on.