[Bf-vfx] VFX related stuff that I think could be improved

[Sebastian König]

Hey all!

Ton recently asked for feedback about things that could be improved in terms of workflows and tools for VFX work in Blender. 
So I started collecting some things.
And now I will just dump that list here! 
Maybe it helps to start to discuss some things, at least to collect feedback.
There is probably much more to it, but anyway, 
here it is:


1. Compositor speed
The speed is not optimal, and especially with huge nodetrees it can become quite slow. I wont focus on the speed issue though in this post. Just make it faster! And give us cache! :)
2. Compositor Canvas
Currently it is a bit strange how Blender deals with dimensions. 
The node tree determines the current „working“ size from the first node in the chain. So if you have an image in put that is 1024*768 for example and you connect a viewer to it, that image is displayed in that size, which is okay. But if you put that image through a translate node, and shift it 200 pixels to the left, it looks like these pixels would be cut off, the backdrop nor the image editor (when set to viewer node) doesn't show them. But they are still there. If you alpha over that image over another, larger image, you can see that they are still there. The entire system is kind of weird and hard to predict. 
It would be nice to have some kind of visual feedback of the canvas size and dimensions. There could be a dashed line in the backdrop or viewer node that indicates the output render dimensions, and it should be possible to move, scale, rotate, transform any image or render input freely on the canvas.
And it would be nice to have some visual controls for image transformations like rotate, scale and move other than just numeric input. I wouldn't to have a UI for that like in Gimp, Photoshop or AfterEffects. These controls would need to be displayed only when the transform node is active. 

3. "Overshoot" : This is mainly related to tracking. Basically it would make it possible to distort CG images. At the moment, when we have tracked a footage that has lens-distortion, we can either undistort the footage to match the CG, or we distort the CG images. But that will only work if CG is always in the center of the frame and never goes over the image borders. Because if it did, the movie-distort node would bend the pixels inward to match the barrel distortion of the footage. As it is now that would leave an empty border around the image. That's why we would need to be able to render larger images so that when we apply the movie distortion the CG pixel match the footage.

4. Lens Distortion Node should support alpha channel

5.  Masking
Masking feels a bit unfinished still. After Tears of Steel almost nothing really happened to improve masking.
Some issues:
- You cannot duplicate masks. That’s really annoying and makes it a bit tedious to mask multiple small tracking markers. You have to paint a circle for every single one of them.
- Easy shape presets would be nice. There could be a circle and a square as shape preset. Well, that would be a bonus, but at least being able to duplicate masks is really essential.
- I suppose if it is possible to duplicate a maskshape it will probably also be possible to copy and paste them. Sometimes you want to be able to move a maskshape to a different mask layer, especially if you have tediously animated it, but need to combine it in a different way.

6. Visual Feedback for masking:
It should be possible to see the black and white mask output right there in the MCE, including the feathered output. It’s not even super important to have realtime playback for that, even though of course that would be nice. But if I have to constantly switch to the compositor just to see the result it gets a bit annoying. 
- And it should not only be possible to see the mask output, but also the composite result, specifically the viewer node output. 
Currently you can use the image editor for that, but it doesn't give you the timeline display of animated mask keyframes, nor does it give you the ability to use tracks for that.
That’s why I would really like to be able to pipe the viewer node output to the movieclipeditor, because there I already have all the functionality that I need to for rotoscoping and tracking. 

7. Drawing masks: 
Bartek Skorupa once already mentioned it, but in fact sometimes it would be nice to have bezier curves for masking as an option. Sometimes these would make it easier to control round shapes next to sharp corners. 
- But even nicer it would be if you could control the length of a curve handle point by the duration of clicking. That’s how it works in After Effects and in fact that’s quite nice. If you ctrl+click shortly it would make a rather sharp curve point, but if you keep it clicked it would keep growing or shrinking the curve point. A bit hard to write how that works, but I hope it’s clear. That way drawing masks could be a lot faster, because you could already define shape and curve falloffs while drawing.
- The direction of masks
Currently you have to draw the mask counterclockwise so that the curve handles point to the outside. If you draw the mask clockwise the control points point to the inside. That’s not really a problem, but as soon as you try to feather it or enable AA for the rasterization it just fails. 
So for example you have the mask with handles pointing inwards. Rendering that mask in the compositor with Antialiasing enabled will still create a mask with sharp jagged edges.
Even worse with feathering. Even though it is possible to create an inner feather control curve, it simples doesn't compute.
It would be nice if it works in both ways. At least it should be possible to have an inner feather control, that just feathers as  you would expect. Which means that the main outer control curve defines the end of feather where it is black, and the green feather line defines the falloff to the center of mask where it is white. 
Even better if direction wouldn't matter and you could drag the feather control curve to both sides of the curve. 

8. Feathering.
Draw the feathered curve works kind of okay as long as you keep it super simple. But as soon as you have large and small control points close to each other, or have corners, it gets really crazy. There are a few workarounds with different feather offset settings and self intersection checks, but overall the whole way the feather curve is calculated could be smarter
9. Mask Interface
The whole concept of Mask Layers is actually quite nice, but the interface is a bit crowded. What I find unnecessarily crowded is the opacity display in the mask layer line. Maybe it’s just a personal thing, but I almost never ever use it. And if I did, there is already a big slider for me to use, no need to display the value in the masklayer line.

There is probably a lot more, but this would be the first batch of things I would like to see improved.


Cheers!

Seb
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