[Bf-committers] Blender into a pipeline

[François T.]

well I'm at ubisoft too, so I guess we are both finding similar issues ;)


2014-02-03 JF <pyroevil at hotmail.com>:

> 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<http://xn--gnralistewww-bebb.pyroevil.com>
>
>
> > From: francoistarlier at gmail.com
> > Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 12:57:54 +0100
> > To: bf-committers at blender.org
> > 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
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Bf-committers at blender.org
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>
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-- 
____________________
François Tarlier
www.francois-tarlier.com
www.linkedin.com/in/francoistarlier