[Bf-vfx] Tomato camera sensor changes

[Ejner Fergo]

Hi Sergey!

I was happy to see that you included the sensor patch into Tomato, but
having tried a newer build I see that you made some changes (removed
sensor height and vertical FOV).

I understand by one of your weekly GSOC mails that you wanted to
simplify the camera data workflow, but I feel disapointed that you
removed the option to acces the vertical FOV ('data.angle_y') through
the camera properties. As I have tried to explain many times on the
patch-tracker, the vertical FOV is important for exporting the camera,
and for importing cameras from other apps. During my tests and writing
the Channel (.chan) importer/exporter, and atleast with FBX (most
likely Collada too), 'data.angle_y' is essential to get the correct
focal length with both export and import. Now this is removed.

Blender is in many ways a complete pipeline tool, but realistically it
is/will be included in existing pipelines among other tools, and here
sharing camera data is very important, like Blender <-> Nuke (which is
why I wrote the chan script, and hacked on Matt's sensor patch).
Removing these settings (sensor height and thereby the vertical FOV)
seems too much of a sacrifies, to simplify the workflow during
tracking.

It's fair enough you want to simplify the sensor settings during
tracking, but then why not just include the 'data.sensor_width' in the
camera data settings as you do now, and have both sensor dimensions
(plus angle_x/angle_y) in the camera properties? What is the deal with
removing the sensor_height anyway? If people find these values
confusing, isn't that why we have all these camera presets now? Also
why is there 2 preset folders for camera data?

I hope you will reconsider the removal of sensor height and vertical
FOV, as this is not just about making camera info seem simple, but how
Blender will fit in mixed software pipelines, and generally be more
complete.

Sincerly,

Ejner Fergo