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CV-VRCam compatibility Sketch and Toon
Posted: 21 January 2016 01:57 PM   [ Ignore ]  
Total Posts:  5
Joined  2015-12-01

Hey guys and gals!

I ran into a major problem while using the VRCam plugin in combination with Sketch&Toon;.

Simply put: It doesn’t seem to work. All I get is a “dot” in the exact middle of the rendered frame which has all the stroke-materials applied to it.

I tried every combination I could think of but no matter if I define the styles globally in the render settings or stick the strokes as s&t-tags to the object in question it doesn’t work. I tried to switch every option I could think of which could make a difference but still the same thing everytime.

Cel-Renderer Works perfectly fine but it doesn’t suffice for the look I am trying to create.

ANY help would be highly appreciated!

Just for clarification I attached the faulty picture as attachment “dot_render.jpg”, the cel-rendered picture as “cel_render.jpg” (to give you an idea of how the equirectangular piece should look like) and the file “sketch_preview.jpg” so you can understand what the “look” would be like.

Kind Regards
Michael

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Posted: 21 January 2016 03:58 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
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Unfortunately VRCam won’t work with Sketch & Toon. VRCam creates the projections by modifying rays, so it won’t work with elements that aren’t raytraced. I’m investigating to find a workflow for non-photorealistic rendering.

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Posted: 22 January 2016 05:53 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
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Thanks for the Info!

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Posted: 22 January 2016 04:04 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]  
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I’ve been experimenting with Mettle’s Skybox Studio plugin for After Effects, and I was able to generate an equirectangular projection for Sketch & Toon by loading the C4D scene into a Mettle Skybox and rendering via Cineware.

You may need to link Cineware to a commercial C4D instance to render Sketch & Toon, and you’ll want to set Cineware to use the Mettle camera by choosing “Centered Comp Camera” in the Cineware Effect Settings. I also had to set the Mettle cam Position Z to 0 to line things up properly.

Skybox Studio doesn’t yet support stereoscopic 360, but it is an option that you can use now for monoscopic 360 Sketch rendering. I’m still hoping to support Sketch natively via CV-VRCam eventually, but it’s a bit down the roadmap.

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Posted: 25 January 2016 07:19 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]  
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Joined  2015-12-01

Oh, thanks for the further insight!

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Posted: 25 January 2016 08:20 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]  
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Joined  2015-12-01

Hey Rick,

Thank you for your help up to now!

We are using mettle’s skybox for inserts and stuff anyway - so i fiddled around a bit - but to be honest, i couldn’t quite get your workflow.

I am importing my cinema file directly to after effects via cineware. Generating a comp with a 4k res - 3840x2160. Now I am extracting the cameras.

Then I am choosing the mettle extractor to get an equirectangular projection. but I am struggling getting this point: “you’ll want to set Cineware to use the Mettle camera by choosing “Centered Comp Camera”. Skybox is providing several cameras - edit cams, cams for the single surfaces and so on. Do you mean replacing the mettle cams with the cams extraced cv-vr cams?

If this works this would be awesome - I am hoping to get to your solution - maybe you can give me some further tipps - thanks for your help up to now!

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Posted: 25 January 2016 06:42 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]  
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Don’t use the Skybox Extractor - use the Skybox Creator.

What I did was create a new skybox comp with the Skybox Creator. Drop the c4d file in that comp. In the Cineware settings the show in the Effect window when the c4d file is selected, there’s a dropdown for Camera - I changed this from “CINEMA 4D Camera” to “Centered Comp Camera” (this tells Cineware to use the AE camera instead of its own). My initial test was with a stationary camera, so I just zeroed the Z position of the Skybox camera and returned to the Creator dialog to generate the Skybox Output.

I just did a quick test with an animated camera, and it looks like you can extract the C4D camera and parent the Skybox camera to the C4D camera. Again, you’ll need to zero the Z position transform on the Skybox Camera. That seemed to work for me, but I’m still experimenting.

I hope to get a video tutorial in production this week on the process.

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Posted: 26 January 2016 06:33 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]  
Total Posts:  5
Joined  2015-12-01

Ah that’s neat. I will give it a spin right now smile

thank you very much for your help!

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