Now when I say shaped bokeh, I don't mean the OctaneRender camera settings that let you specify the bokeh side count, edge and roundness. I'm referring to the idea of photographers IRL putting a small shaped opening in front of the camera lens to change the appearance of the out of focus objects and lights.
For example using something like this:
To turn this:
Into this:
(Above images credit: https://www.diyphotography.net/diy_crea ... own_bokeh/)
So if OctaneRender simulates a physical camera then we should be able to achieve the same in 3D by putting a plane with a small shaped cutout in front of the camera right? Turns out yes - it does indeed work!
Here is an image I rendered this evening, using a plane with an opacity texture of a heart shaped cutout in front of the camera.
And here is a screenshot of my scene in the Daz viewport - basically Just a character and the camera. The little red square is the plane with the heart shaped cutout opacity texture - just made it red for this screenshot so it's easily visible.
The background is just the Octane HDR environment, using the Neuer Zollhof HDRI from hdrihaven.com - free to download here: https://hdrihaven.com/hdri/?h=neuer_zollhof
One caveat I've found so far is that you can't use the AI Denoiser when doing this. I don't know why, but despite the raw render looking like what I posted above, the denoiser beauty pass would always output perfectly hexagonal bokeh. Maybe the AI algorithm thinks it knows what the bokeh should look like based on the camera settings and ignores the effect of the plane in front of it? Possibly a bug, but also fascinating that it completely changes the bokeh appearance.
Thanks for the read and curious to see anyone else's results if you try this!
-Matt
