I can see the hard word and tons of hours building mathematical equations for the lenses, that lens sheet and real-time crystal lens customization is beyond amazing man! Your are a genius! I bet this took you long time to build!! congratulations!
Thanks! I started developing this addon when the ray portal plane came out along with Zircron45's lens video: th-cam.com/video/jT9LWq279OI/w-d-xo.html It's been a long journey, but it's awesome to see the feedback from the community now that the addon is finally out!
This is absolutely amazing! The cut-away view of lens elements with adjustments for everything is incredible. I can't even imagine the amount of time this took to create. Thank you for developing this addon. It's next-level brilliant!
the BEST add-on for Blender ever, thank you so much! Been waiting for someone to finally make this. I bet in a couple months no one is rendering anything without this anymore... ._.
That's awesome, my jaw dropped! There is a tutorial on setting up your lens profile, but it could be a lot of work and mistakes. Only vintage lenses are available, adding popular ones would also be a good idea. Will there be more lens profiles added in the future?
Thanks! For me, it's not that hard to implement lenses with this system. The problem is finding unique lenses that doesn't have aspheric surfaces(not implemented) and less than 15 lens elements(15 elements is quite slow to render and having more is limited by the material node limit). if you have a specific lens patent you want to have implemented just give me a shoutout and I can implement it :) I created a thread on blenderartist to discuss the addon: blenderartists.org/t/lens-sim/1557203
This is outstanding! I wonder how complex it would be to incorporate some cinema lenses, like the "Arri Signature" or Panavision's C Series. Brilliant work, regardless!
Thanks! The main issue is finding them, seems like modern lens descriptions is non existing 🤔 There is also some limitations with the system, it doesn't support aspheric lens surfaces(common in modern lens designs). Also, having a large amount of lens elements makes the rendering quite slow. Would be cool to implement these kind of lenses though!
@ when I rendered the same scene one with and one without the addon it added around 5 seconds to render it which doesn’t seem bad but it adds up on a long animation
This is one of most impressive and realistic addons I have seen for blender! You have packed this with so many useful features as well. I have one small request if it is possible. Could you add the ability to have two focus planes? Instead of a single point in focus, everything between the two points is in focus. Then everything behind or in front slowly blurs out. Thanks
Thanks! Unfortunately that's not doable, I lose all control of the ray once its exits the lens. I have implemented split diopters, but it's not quite the same.
Awesome Blender plugin! I finally found the original author's contact! In the future, if it can be further upgraded to work with optical design software like Zemax, it would be even better! That way, I could verify the optical imaging effects of the lens groups I design. I attempted to simulate the imaging of a convex lens using caustics. At first, the settings were not correct, but I was finally able to achieve successful imaging by adjusting the gloss filter settings😃
Thanks! I plan to implement a .zmx importer, I can't promise anything but except from the ray guiding it should be pretty easy to import the lens surfaces from those files. Aspheres is not supported at the moment. Caustics does not work with the Lens Sim system, but the next Lens Sim update will come with a "Generate Lens Mesh" function that generates a 3d mesh from the schematics, so you will be able to get the caustics you want from rendering the meshed lens :)
Awesome product! Which lens was used at 6:56 though? Is it a lens included in the full version, or a custom lens? I really want to use that anamorphic cylindrical distortion effect that gets stronger at the edges of the frame (most visible at the right edge). It's different than barrel distortion and looks better imo and can only be replicated well with actual anamorphic simulations as far as I know.
Hi! I used the 61mm f2.5 Anastigmatic anamorphic lens. To get some exaggerated effects I added 2.0 Chromatic Aberration and 2.0 Distortion Amount(Emulation->Distortion panel) with a 2.0 Exponent. I also set the Focal Length Add(Emulation->Controversial panel) to -90.0 for a more wide angle lens. That should give you the same results as that shot in the video :)
Yeah, for sure! The main reason why I haven't added more lenses is that it's hard to find unique lenses that's non-aspherical and less than 15 lens elements. I've added a link to the forum page in the video description if you have any patents you would like to see implemented :)
Absolutely awesome addon! Instant buy. Are there any plans to add more modern anamorphic lenses? I'm particularly thinking of lenses with a strong character, like the Atlas Orion series or Panavision lenses.
Thanks! If somebody can find the lens description and the lenses fits within the limitations of the system, sure! The biggest limitation to modern lenses is the aspheric lens elements, they are not supported. I plan to do a try on aspheric lenses when blender devs implements the for loop system in materials, that would make it easier to debug and implement. Also, its quite hard to find the patents for the lenses, so if you have them please let me know!
When I try installing this addon I get this error: ZIP packaged incorrectly; __init__.py should be in a directory, not at top-level. I feel stupid, please help
@@rolandmine6693 Hi, I think that error message comes when the blender version is not supported. What blender version are you using? Make sure it's Blender 4.2 or higher.
Hi, super cool plugin, I just bought it. But is there something wrong with navigating? I can't navigate the camera as usual? Am I missing something? Rotating and moving works but zooming does not. Great work anyway!
Thanks! One of the biggest caveats is that the camera is orthographic, you can press "Disable Lenses" in the main panel to convert it back to a standard camera that represents the Lens Sim camera as closely as possible. Be sure to watch the Main Tutorial to learn how the setup works: th-cam.com/video/1eDwnidoAME/w-d-xo.html
HI! I'm a bit unsure what you mean by that. Lens Sim does support multi layered .exr format with AOV's, but all passes are affected by the optical vignetting, making most of them useless for compositing work.
Does Lens Sim have settings for exposure time? I use Photographer right now, which tries to use real world lights and HDRs so that when you set up you camera, you use real world camera settings. This seems like the next step in truly simulating the camera/scene.
In the next update it will have a exposure parameter per camera that works exactly the same as the Color Management -> Exposure. Do you think that would work?
@@MrHeinzelnisse Yes. Anything that brings in film ISO and especially exposure completes that whole 'simulation circle'. Especially if you're in to photography. ;-) So, is this actually tracing models of the lenses?
@@AndyTanguay Great :) Yes, I'm tracing all the lens elements by simulating them virtually in a shader. You can edit and implement the lenses directly via the addon.
How would you recommend creating variable focal length zooming shots with this add-on? As of now, adjusting the focal length seems to break the effect of the lens
Hi! Under Advanced Settings -> Camera -> Emulation -> Controversial there is a "Focal Length Add" parameter. That will extend the focal length of the lens without the limitations of the lens itself, that should to the trick 😎
Both :) I simulate the lens with a node setup using the Ray Portal BSDF inside a material. Its mostly just ray sphere or ray cylinder intersection functions, converted into math nodes. The python script is for the Lens Sim panel and to make it user friendly to use :)
Thank you for developing such a great add-on! Is the overscan feature included? I tried using the existing overscan add-on and it did not work well with the Lens Sim add-on.
That would be cool, but a bit out of reach for this product. Nuke is a completely different software than blender, so I would't even know where to start 😅
Hi! AOV's does work, but all of them will be affected by the optical vignetting. Passes like depth, motion vector and position are quite useless, I believe they are set from the first sample so if that sample hits the inside of the lens boundary it will be black. You will be able to reconstruct the whole render via combining passes like (DiffDir + DiffInd) * DiffCol etc, but the passes will be darkened towards the edges of the circle of illumination. The Cryptomatte seems to work like normal, but its a bit hard to select objects towards the edges of the circle of illumination(it pics up more and more of the lens object).
This looks realy amazing. I tried to simulating lenses with the Portal shader node aswell, but I couldn't figure out a way to guide the samples. I think I'm gonna buy it just to see how you solved it. Just aut of curiosity, are you planning to add support for zoom lenses, or non-sperical surfaces in the future?
Thanks! It took quite a lot of rebuilding and prototyping to get the ray guiding to work as it does now, the system I have now is far from perfect but it seems to work well enough :) Aspheric lenses is quite hard to implement right now since its a iterative calculation process, and quite calculation intensive. I have seen some promising for loops in the newest blender dev versions, maybe that will make it easier to debug and implement, well see :) The only problem I can see with zoom lenses is if the aperture is placed after the moving zoom lens element, that will break the ray guiding system. But other than that it should be quite easy to implement. I've added a link to the forum page in the video description if you have any features you would like to see implemented, I think I will make a poll if I notice a big demand for new features.
This is very impressive! Do you have any information on how much it affects render times? 🙂 I'm guessing it depends on the lens chosen, but do you have any example data? Many thanks. Edit: Sorry I've just seen your documentation on the Blender Market link with all the info I need. Thank you!
Yes! All lenses are implemented directly in Lens Sim, the ray guiding is a bit complicated to understand, but it gets easy after a while :) Tutorial can be found in the salespage under the documentation section.
@@MrHeinzelnisse oh i see, but its just my opinion but id doesnt matter anyway, cuz your product is so good, i will highly recommend this to all 3d artist who wants a photo realistic lens sim, thank you as always 🎉🎉🎉
@@ey891 No, some required nodes in my setup is not working in Eevee. Like the Ray Portal node, I think there are also some nodes that handle incoming rays and vectors that are not supported. I don't think it will happen anytime soon.
Hi, that's strange. You should be able to animate it just like the standard blender camera. Please send me a direct message using the "Ask a Question" button on the salespage, so that we can investigate this further.
The Lens Sim system works with a specific focal length, focus distance, f-stop etc. I believe some of the functionalities the Photographer addon might mess with that. I've talked to the Photographer creator to work on these issues, so it should work better in the upcoming update of Lens Sim and Photographer. But I haven't tested the addon myself, so I cant say for sure how all the functionalities work.
@@Slicflow Hmm, depends. I haven't tried Octane before. If Octane has all the standard math nodes that is included in Cycles, I guess it would only require a implementation of the Ray Portal BSDF node. And then my full node network has to be converted to Octanes node system. I think Octane has OSL camera shader support, I do have a prototype that will be able to work with a few customization if somebody wants to do some tests on it :)
@@bananaear23 Thats not quite the same, light portals in Redshift is only to guide general light paths towards a window etc. What it would require is to precisely be able to bend each camera rays position and direction. It seems like lens rendering is getting more popular though, so I would guess more render engines will have at least support for OSL camera shaders in the future, making it possible to render real lenses. That being said, I don't think I will adapt it to any other programs anytime soon, I have enough work to do on this setup for a long time ;)
@@MrHeinzelnisse Thank you for taking my question and comment, your work is incredible. I am inspired by it and would love if you dove into the mechanics of it and how you did it - I could be totally wrong but I doubt it will create competition in blender but might make replication accessible in other programs. I understand you keeping the fruit of your diligent and innovative work.
@@bananaear23 No problem! Here is a short version of how it works: Simplified its just a ray sphere intersection function for every lens surface, and of a refraction function for the IOR value of each lens element. The aperture is a ray plane function. That is enough to ray trace spherical lens elements, for anamorphic lenses you also need a ray cylinder function. Once that is done you have a fully functional lens model :) To find the optimal censor position you can shoot a ray from the focusing distance(lets say 3m away from the lens) aimed to the outer lens element, it needs to be aimed not in the middle but with a slight angle so that the ray can converge trough the lens and not in a straight line. The specific height of the point where it hits the lens will determine the focusing, for example aim it at half the radius of the outer lens element(you need to adjust the height to fine tune the focusing point). The converged ray on the horizontal axis when shot through the lens is where you want to put your image sensor. For a OSL camera script you might want to build a LUT to determine the sensor position instead of doing this calculation per ray. Cycles is very good at optimizing code, so that information is only calculated once per frame. On anamorphic lenses you also have the rack focus that needs to be adjusted, I'm using a LUT for that in combination with the ray calculation. I guess the last and hardest part is to make the ray guiding work to waste as few samples when rendering at different f-stops. My method here is far from perfect, so you might want to design your own system. But in general you want to aim the rays towards the aperture opening, and compensate for the difference sensor positions. For my system its a tedious process requiring manual adjustments to 10+ parameters for each implemented lens to get the calibration right. I know there are some papers out there if you want to go a scientific way about it, but I ended up just experimenting with it until I found a good enough solution. And since the whole lens is only working on a code level, you might also want to calculate the actual field of view of the current setup to get a good viewport representation of the lens. Factors like the focusing distance and sensor size is important to get the calculations right. There will always be some deviations due to lens distortion etc that makes the viewport camera deviate. And then just make the whole system user friendly, make it work with multiple lenses, add a debugging system to make the lens implementations easier and your done! ;) Let me know if you want to chat more about it, and we can arrange a meeting or something :)
I hope Blender buys this from you and adds it straight into the software. This is amazing. My mind is blown. Great job!
INSANE! That lens breathing with the rack focus is chef's kiss.
This add-on is itself a piece of art. Sir, i salute you. Will get that thang asap, can’t wait to re-render some classics.
Good pricing btw.
Thanks! Can't wait to see the renders people make!
You're simulating the Chromatic Aberration of a lens. This is the signature look that photographers and cinematographers drool over.
I can see the hard word and tons of hours building mathematical equations for the lenses, that lens sheet and real-time crystal lens customization is beyond amazing man! Your are a genius! I bet this took you long time to build!! congratulations!
Thanks! I started developing this addon when the ray portal plane came out along with Zircron45's lens video: th-cam.com/video/jT9LWq279OI/w-d-xo.html
It's been a long journey, but it's awesome to see the feedback from the community now that the addon is finally out!
This is absolutely amazing! The cut-away view of lens elements with adjustments for everything is incredible. I can't even imagine the amount of time this took to create. Thank you for developing this addon. It's next-level brilliant!
HOLY SMOKES! I didn't think anything would top Octane's Universal Camera. What an incredible addon!
epic man, just epic. Can't wait to see the community's renders with this vast library of lenses
Thanks! Yeah, same, looking forward to see the renders :)
This is truly beautiful and amazing
I wondered if something like this was possible, so it's really cool to see you've done it. Great job. I can't believe how good it looks.
Very cool! I'm looking forward to buying this.
the BEST add-on for Blender ever, thank you so much! Been waiting for someone to finally make this. I bet in a couple months no one is rendering anything without this anymore... ._.
Haha, I hope so :) People have started making renders already, they look amazing!
This is amazing. Going to buy the full version ASAP
This is incredible. Thank you for your efforts!
Impressive work! Worth buying 100%
It's incredible that you've simulated the lens elements inside a camera. You must've studied a lot of optics to make this.
Wow, it's already impressive, but I'm really curious to see how this add-on will evolve in the future!
In the list of the few plugins I wanna buy, this one is rising to the top
Damn so cool!!! You are a genius!!!
Thanks sooo much for creating this! ❤❤
That's awesome, my jaw dropped! There is a tutorial on setting up your lens profile, but it could be a lot of work and mistakes. Only vintage lenses are available, adding popular ones would also be a good idea. Will there be more lens profiles added in the future?
Thanks! For me, it's not that hard to implement lenses with this system. The problem is finding unique lenses that doesn't have aspheric surfaces(not implemented) and less than 15 lens elements(15 elements is quite slow to render and having more is limited by the material node limit). if you have a specific lens patent you want to have implemented just give me a shoutout and I can implement it :) I created a thread on blenderartist to discuss the addon: blenderartists.org/t/lens-sim/1557203
This is incredible, congrats and thanks a lot! I'll buy it as soon as I can
Best Addon out there!
fascinating to watch, I can't wait to try it out.
This is outstanding! I wonder how complex it would be to incorporate some cinema lenses, like the "Arri Signature" or Panavision's C Series. Brilliant work, regardless!
Thanks! The main issue is finding them, seems like modern lens descriptions is non existing 🤔 There is also some limitations with the system, it doesn't support aspheric lens surfaces(common in modern lens designs). Also, having a large amount of lens elements makes the rendering quite slow. Would be cool to implement these kind of lenses though!
Just bought it, it’s crazy good! Slight increased render time, but it’s so worth it!
Hey, @InsaneToggled how much does it add to render time?
Could you estimate in terms of percentage?
@ when I rendered the same scene one with and one without the addon it added around 5 seconds to render it which doesn’t seem bad but it adds up on a long animation
bruh - great work
thanks bruh
This is THE DREAM, WOW
This is one of most impressive and realistic addons I have seen for blender! You have packed this with so many useful features as well.
I have one small request if it is possible. Could you add the ability to have two focus planes? Instead of a single point in focus, everything between the two points is in focus. Then everything behind or in front slowly blurs out. Thanks
Thanks! Unfortunately that's not doable, I lose all control of the ray once its exits the lens. I have implemented split diopters, but it's not quite the same.
@ thanks for letting me know, I’m excited to try some animations with the tool
Top notch! awesome addon!
Wow, this is great. Keep up the good work!
This is amazing, hats off honestly
Impressive addon! 😳
Great job! Will definitely get one 👏
Revolutionary stuff!!!
This is incredible! 🙌
I am happy I’ve purchased this. Sadly, there were two similar products that I got before, but they weren’t as good as this…
Amazing work!
Awesome Blender plugin! I finally found the original author's contact! In the future, if it can be further upgraded to work with optical design software like Zemax, it would be even better! That way, I could verify the optical imaging effects of the lens groups I design. I attempted to simulate the imaging of a convex lens using caustics. At first, the settings were not correct, but I was finally able to achieve successful imaging by adjusting the gloss filter settings😃
Thanks! I plan to implement a .zmx importer, I can't promise anything but except from the ray guiding it should be pretty easy to import the lens surfaces from those files. Aspheres is not supported at the moment. Caustics does not work with the Lens Sim system, but the next Lens Sim update will come with a "Generate Lens Mesh" function that generates a 3d mesh from the schematics, so you will be able to get the caustics you want from rendering the meshed lens :)
this should be the standard
Looks COOL!
Awesome product! Which lens was used at 6:56 though? Is it a lens included in the full version, or a custom lens?
I really want to use that anamorphic cylindrical distortion effect that gets stronger at the edges of the frame (most visible at the right edge). It's different than barrel distortion and looks better imo and can only be replicated well with actual anamorphic simulations as far as I know.
Hi! I used the 61mm f2.5 Anastigmatic anamorphic lens. To get some exaggerated effects I added 2.0 Chromatic Aberration and 2.0 Distortion Amount(Emulation->Distortion panel) with a 2.0 Exponent. I also set the Focal Length Add(Emulation->Controversial panel) to -90.0 for a more wide angle lens. That should give you the same results as that shot in the video :)
I wish you made this amazing add-on to Houdini's Karma!
:D I think Karma supports camera shaders, I do have OSL code to trace a lens system if you want to mess around with it and try for yourself :)
Looks great! If you could port an 2D-optimized version for After Effects and/or Resolve, those markets would be quite into it.
Thanks! That would be cool, but I think I'm going to dedicate my time to this project for a while :D
this is inasane bro
Amazing stuff! Are you planning to add more lens profiles in the future?
Yeah, for sure! The main reason why I haven't added more lenses is that it's hard to find unique lenses that's non-aspherical and less than 15 lens elements. I've added a link to the forum page in the video description if you have any patents you would like to see implemented :)
@@MrHeinzelnisse Wonderful! Your add on is one of the most impressive ones out there right now!
GENIUS!!!!!!!
Absolutely awesome addon! Instant buy. Are there any plans to add more modern anamorphic lenses? I'm particularly thinking of lenses with a strong character, like the Atlas Orion series or Panavision lenses.
Thanks! If somebody can find the lens description and the lenses fits within the limitations of the system, sure! The biggest limitation to modern lenses is the aspheric lens elements, they are not supported. I plan to do a try on aspheric lenses when blender devs implements the for loop system in materials, that would make it easier to debug and implement. Also, its quite hard to find the patents for the lenses, so if you have them please let me know!
Awesome work. Super impressive.
Does this work with Octane Render in Blender?
Hi! No, It only works with Cycles, Blender 4.2+
Heisann Herr Heinzelnisse , Fine linser!
Hei! Takk!
Looks amazing! Do you have a comparison of how this impacts performance/render time?
Thank you! Yes, you can read the full Documentation on the sales page :)
Norsk? Ble å kjøpe denne med en gang ! Kudos
Stemmer det, takk!
brilliant ! cheers from RIo
When I try installing this addon I get this error: ZIP packaged incorrectly; __init__.py should be in a directory, not at top-level. I feel stupid, please help
@@rolandmine6693 Hi, I think that error message comes when the blender version is not supported. What blender version are you using? Make sure it's Blender 4.2 or higher.
@ yeah I figured it out earlier. Thanks for getting back to me though.
Hi, super cool plugin, I just bought it. But is there something wrong with navigating? I can't navigate the camera as usual? Am I missing something?
Rotating and moving works but zooming does not.
Great work anyway!
Thanks! One of the biggest caveats is that the camera is orthographic, you can press "Disable Lenses" in the main panel to convert it back to a standard camera that represents the Lens Sim camera as closely as possible. Be sure to watch the Main Tutorial to learn how the setup works: th-cam.com/video/1eDwnidoAME/w-d-xo.html
Still here
does lens effects doesn't work when u export in exr format??..if yes can u explain on how to use it in exr output?
HI! I'm a bit unsure what you mean by that. Lens Sim does support multi layered .exr format with AOV's, but all passes are affected by the optical vignetting, making most of them useless for compositing work.
Does Lens Sim have settings for exposure time? I use Photographer right now, which tries to use real world lights and HDRs so that when you set up you camera, you use real world camera settings. This seems like the next step in truly simulating the camera/scene.
In the next update it will have a exposure parameter per camera that works exactly the same as the Color Management -> Exposure. Do you think that would work?
@@MrHeinzelnisse Yes. Anything that brings in film ISO and especially exposure completes that whole 'simulation circle'. Especially if you're in to photography. ;-)
So, is this actually tracing models of the lenses?
@@AndyTanguay Great :) Yes, I'm tracing all the lens elements by simulating them virtually in a shader. You can edit and implement the lenses directly via the addon.
@@MrHeinzelnisse You madman!!! I love it.
How would you recommend creating variable focal length zooming shots with this add-on? As of now, adjusting the focal length seems to break the effect of the lens
Hi! Under Advanced Settings -> Camera -> Emulation -> Controversial there is a "Focal Length Add" parameter. That will extend the focal length of the lens without the limitations of the lens itself, that should to the trick 😎
How this is made? Is it some kind of nodes or python script?
Both :) I simulate the lens with a node setup using the Ray Portal BSDF inside a material. Its mostly just ray sphere or ray cylinder intersection functions, converted into math nodes. The python script is for the Lens Sim panel and to make it user friendly to use :)
Thank you for developing such a great add-on! Is the overscan feature included? I tried using the existing overscan add-on and it did not work well with the Lens Sim add-on.
Thanks! It does not have a overscan feature. That might be a good idea for a future update, I'll add it to the list :)
Would be great if you could adapt this addon to Nuke.
That would be cool, but a bit out of reach for this product. Nuke is a completely different software than blender, so I would't even know where to start 😅
Can it produce lens flare if no are you thinking adding that feature
Unfortunately no. I know there are some good papers out there on the subject, but I think its a bit out of reach for this addon.
amazingggg
That's Crazy. Can it be used with the octane edition ?
Thanks! No, the setup only works in blender 4.2+ and Cycled render engine.
Does it handle the lens distortions fully for compositing? Like cryptomattes and aovs?
Hi! AOV's does work, but all of them will be affected by the optical vignetting. Passes like depth, motion vector and position are quite useless, I believe they are set from the first sample so if that sample hits the inside of the lens boundary it will be black. You will be able to reconstruct the whole render via combining passes like (DiffDir + DiffInd) * DiffCol etc, but the passes will be darkened towards the edges of the circle of illumination. The Cryptomatte seems to work like normal, but its a bit hard to select objects towards the edges of the circle of illumination(it pics up more and more of the lens object).
@@MrHeinzelnisse OK much appreciated for the full explanation. The add-on looks great regardless
This looks realy amazing. I tried to simulating lenses with the Portal shader node aswell, but I couldn't figure out a way to guide the samples. I think I'm gonna buy it just to see how you solved it. Just aut of curiosity, are you planning to add support for zoom lenses, or non-sperical surfaces in the future?
Thanks! It took quite a lot of rebuilding and prototyping to get the ray guiding to work as it does now, the system I have now is far from perfect but it seems to work well enough :) Aspheric lenses is quite hard to implement right now since its a iterative calculation process, and quite calculation intensive. I have seen some promising for loops in the newest blender dev versions, maybe that will make it easier to debug and implement, well see :) The only problem I can see with zoom lenses is if the aperture is placed after the moving zoom lens element, that will break the ray guiding system. But other than that it should be quite easy to implement. I've added a link to the forum page in the video description if you have any features you would like to see implemented, I think I will make a poll if I notice a big demand for new features.
This is very impressive! Do you have any information on how much it affects render times? 🙂 I'm guessing it depends on the lens chosen, but do you have any example data? Many thanks.
Edit: Sorry I've just seen your documentation on the Blender Market link with all the info I need. Thank you!
Thanks Glad you found it :D
@@MrHeinzelnissehaha. Thank you. Yes and based on that I also found the purchase button! 😂
Wow, kjempebra!
Takk! :D
Is it possible to add other lenses using the Lens graph? Or is it more complicated than that?
Yes! All lenses are implemented directly in Lens Sim, the ray guiding is a bit complicated to understand, but it gets easy after a while :) Tutorial can be found in the salespage under the documentation section.
@@MrHeinzelnisse I love you
@@JohnHarrisonForever :D Keep in mind the limitations, so far it supports max 15 lens elements, and only spherical and cylindrical lenses.
Cycles only or does it work w ever as well
Hi! It only works with Cycles, blender 4.2 :)
Can this plugin defocus an image sequence using a Z depth map?
Like using the Z depth from the AOV's? Due to the optical vignetting the Z depth map will be quite broken, so that will not be possible.
Wow! this is so good, but im confuse why you didnt name, or credit that it's a Anamorphic Glass?
Thanks! I guess working with the addon for too long made me feel like I'm just showcasing the system, and not a particular lens 😅
@@MrHeinzelnisse oh i see, but its just my opinion but id doesnt matter anyway, cuz your product is so good, i will highly recommend this to all 3d artist who wants a photo realistic lens sim, thank you as always 🎉🎉🎉
WOuld it be possible to export geometry to maxwell render?
I am working on a converter that outputs a 3D mesh of the lens, so that will be possible in a future update :)
Will this also be coming to Eevee next?
@@ey891 No, some required nodes in my setup is not working in Eevee. Like the Ray Portal node, I think there are also some nodes that handle incoming rays and vectors that are not supported. I don't think it will happen anytime soon.
when creating an animation, the lens jerks! How to animate it correctly?
Hi, that's strange. You should be able to animate it just like the standard blender camera. Please send me a direct message using the "Ask a Question" button on the salespage, so that we can investigate this further.
Don't know if this works with Luxcore renderer
Hi! It only works in blender 4.2+ with Cycles.
@@MrHeinzelnisse 😔
Any plans to bring this to Unreal Engine?
I have a plan to be able to convert the lenses into a 3D mesh, that you then can export and experiment with in Unreal Engine. But other than that, no.
Can it work with Photographer add on ?
The Lens Sim system works with a specific focal length, focus distance, f-stop etc. I believe some of the functionalities the Photographer addon might mess with that. I've talked to the Photographer creator to work on these issues, so it should work better in the upcoming update of Lens Sim and Photographer. But I haven't tested the addon myself, so I cant say for sure how all the functionalities work.
This is straight up porn for 3D artists, my god
Does it work with Blender Octane?
Hi! No, It only works with Cycles, Blender 4.2+
@ ahh damn!! I was looking forward to it. Can we expect it to work with Octane Blender in the future?
@@Slicflow Hmm, depends. I haven't tried Octane before. If Octane has all the standard math nodes that is included in Cycles, I guess it would only require a implementation of the Ray Portal BSDF node. And then my full node network has to be converted to Octanes node system.
I think Octane has OSL camera shader support, I do have a prototype that will be able to work with a few customization if somebody wants to do some tests on it :)
😮❤😮❤😮
can this be adopted to c4d?
Unfortunately not. The setup is built in blender and is using the Ray Portal BSDF material, so a conversion to c4d is not possible.
@@MrHeinzelnisse Redshift light portals? I think this is worth looking into-you can charge a much higher price tag if you convert it.
@@bananaear23 Thats not quite the same, light portals in Redshift is only to guide general light paths towards a window etc. What it would require is to precisely be able to bend each camera rays position and direction. It seems like lens rendering is getting more popular though, so I would guess more render engines will have at least support for OSL camera shaders in the future, making it possible to render real lenses. That being said, I don't think I will adapt it to any other programs anytime soon, I have enough work to do on this setup for a long time ;)
@@MrHeinzelnisse Thank you for taking my question and comment, your work is incredible. I am inspired by it and would love if you dove into the mechanics of it and how you did it - I could be totally wrong but I doubt it will create competition in blender but might make replication accessible in other programs. I understand you keeping the fruit of your diligent and innovative work.
@@bananaear23 No problem! Here is a short version of how it works: Simplified its just a ray sphere intersection function for every lens surface, and of a refraction function for the IOR value of each lens element. The aperture is a ray plane function. That is enough to ray trace spherical lens elements, for anamorphic lenses you also need a ray cylinder function. Once that is done you have a fully functional lens model :)
To find the optimal censor position you can shoot a ray from the focusing distance(lets say 3m away from the lens) aimed to the outer lens element, it needs to be aimed not in the middle but with a slight angle so that the ray can converge trough the lens and not in a straight line. The specific height of the point where it hits the lens will determine the focusing, for example aim it at half the radius of the outer lens element(you need to adjust the height to fine tune the focusing point). The converged ray on the horizontal axis when shot through the lens is where you want to put your image sensor. For a OSL camera script you might want to build a LUT to determine the sensor position instead of doing this calculation per ray. Cycles is very good at optimizing code, so that information is only calculated once per frame. On anamorphic lenses you also have the rack focus that needs to be adjusted, I'm using a LUT for that in combination with the ray calculation.
I guess the last and hardest part is to make the ray guiding work to waste as few samples when rendering at different f-stops. My method here is far from perfect, so you might want to design your own system. But in general you want to aim the rays towards the aperture opening, and compensate for the difference sensor positions. For my system its a tedious process requiring manual adjustments to 10+ parameters for each implemented lens to get the calibration right. I know there are some papers out there if you want to go a scientific way about it, but I ended up just experimenting with it until I found a good enough solution.
And since the whole lens is only working on a code level, you might also want to calculate the actual field of view of the current setup to get a good viewport representation of the lens. Factors like the focusing distance and sensor size is important to get the calculations right. There will always be some deviations due to lens distortion etc that makes the viewport camera deviate.
And then just make the whole system user friendly, make it work with multiple lenses, add a debugging system to make the lens implementations easier and your done! ;) Let me know if you want to chat more about it, and we can arrange a meeting or something :)
Very cool. Does it work with EEVEE/Next?
Hi! No, Cycles and the ray portal plane is a requirement for the system to work.