Lytro camera - forget about focus

this is a great thing for VFX which honestly hasn't really changed al that much in 20 years. We still shoot on green and then try to key it out to replace the background. We have to light it carefully and try to get the edges to look as clean and realistic as possible. Same thing for match moving, rotoscoping and object removal. All of these are rather tedious acts that involve trying to paint out or modify pixels in a flat image.

The camera on its own doesn't do that work for you but what it does is remove the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of fudging around with pixels to try to do the same thing. VFX artists are wizards who do an amazing job at this already but they end up spending a huge amount of time and money to do so. Having this camera will not change the outcome of VFX in movies but it will make the path to get there much shorter.

rotoscoping artists might want to start padding their resumes however. If this thing does as well as it claims to then rotoscoping will become a thing of the past. Compositing will still be an art form because no matter how you mask something out that doesn't make it look real or handle the complexities of multiple layers interacting with each other. Things like shadows and lighting and a realistic blending of layers will still be a process to make shots look believable. This camera just eliminates the BS of green and trying to create an alpha channel by sacrificing a color channel.

3D animation has been able to render perfect alpha channels and z-depth channels for years and nobody considers that cheating. By using that z-depth channel focus can be shifted or individual objects can be masked out of the shot even without an alpha channel. It is only a good thing if a camera can finally get us to that same level.
 
Lots of data to process though. For a while, it will be a series of trade-offs. Still, if the trade-off is between the on-the-set time vs. post, then a lot of TV productions will give it a serious look. "Wilfred" was shot in front of a green screen in order to stay within its (fairly low) budget. If this helps take another step in this type of shooting, a lot of scripted programs will indeed consider taking it.
 
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I'm both fascinated and terrified by this at the same time.

I think they're being very sensible in the marketing of this by pitching it as a camera specifically for VFX, the soft sell will help them get into the market... though God only knows what happens then (particularly to our jobs).
 
It's interesting but as i deal in vfx day in day out i'm not totally convinced.

A depth map is an awesome thing, but it can't replace a green screen because depth has no anti aliasing, no transparency. So whilst you could pull a rough key you'd still need a green screen in order to work on edges and fine detail. Half the art of keying is not the key but prepping the despill maps and adjusting the colour of the background before a key. You need a colour screen in there to do that. Don't forget the luma of one background is typically different to what it's being keyed onto.

I suppose with a super high res you can do away with the keying, but there's no mention what the 2D resolution is? But i doubt it's high enough.

Then what DP will want to forgo lens choices and stick with a clinical flat look? Half the fun of movie production are the aberrations that organic lenses and accidents create. What does this camera do with a lens flare? :)

Post doing DOF is difficult too - not only because very few things model how light is bent and diffracted through an OOF edge. You'd probably also need more than 16 stops if you wanted to model bokeh properly.

The danger is the belief that this will fix everything. In fact i bet in production, with a moving camera and the kinds of sh*t that happens on set this will make things enormously complicated and produce data sets of insane proportions that will still end up on a artists desk saying fix this but you have 1/10th of the time now because 'it's all there'.

Perhaps in use as a dedicated virtual environment capture, alongside normal cameras it will be useful. Or in a studio with live keying, it would be fantastic. But for movie production - it's a double edged sword. IMHO.

I see the tools are Nuke based, so perhaps i can get some sample light fields - i'd love to see what's actually there!

cheers
Paul
 
paulcurtis said:
A 4K sized depth map isn't enough resolution for keying really. With no anti-aliasing you'd probably be looking a 4 to 16 times that kind of resolution. Less if you're delivering HD, more if it's 4K

cheers
Paul
Click to expand...

Further down on this page there is a demo of the depth screen capability. Looks fairly detailed to me, but, no way to know if this is faked or the real thing--

https://www.lytro.com/cinema
 
Batutta said:
Further down on this page there is a demo of the depth screen capability. Looks fairly detailed to me, but, no way to know if this is faked or the real thing--

https://www.lytro.com/cinema
Click to expand...

There's an fxguide post cast on this which i haven't been able to listen to yet but they're usually good sources of info.

I can't say from that example, i can see issues in her hat glitching. Without a screen, if this doesn't work then you're out of luck whereas a screen has more fall backs. What happens when you're not shooting a simple staged static screen?

What happens when you're shooting through glass? How can it tell how transparent it is, does the depth map stop at the glass? How about a reflection of the screen in other objects where you need to key in proper reflections? Think of aliasing issues with materials.

Don't get me wrong, this is awesomely interesting tech but people shouldn't be touting this as the 'just-do-it' button of vfx. VFX is hard, things are usually not shot perfectly. There are always problems and finding ways around the problems are the core of the work. This is a fantastic looking tool, but will it live up to the canned samples in the real world? No one knows yet.

I'm sure this is the first step on a journey and at the end of that journey maybe we will be capturing full fields.

Right now the degree of movement possible is 100mm in all directions. Is that enough to see around someone? Nope

cheers
Paul
 
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