Octane Camera - Bokeh Feature Request

[TogTobias]

Hi guys! Just wondering if there's any plans on adding a bokeh modifier for the Octane Camera. I've attached a simple photo showing bokeh of specular highlights on steel in direct sunlight. This is actually an out of focus shot of my skull ring which got me thinking about bokeh in Octane. I love how color dispersion works in specular materials within Octane and think that would be an awesome feature to have in some kind of bokeh modifier.

If I've missed that this feature is already present or is achievable in Octane 2.x then I apologize for the post. Otherwise, consider this a feature request!

[grimm]

Yep it's in there.

I don't remember exactly how I got the Bokeh to show up, try playing around with the camera lens settings.

[TogTobias]

Yep it's in there.

monument8.png

I don't remember exactly how I got the Bokeh to show up, try playing around with the camera lens settings.

Ok perfect. I will. A "modifier" within the camera tag would be awesome still. Just to dial in various lens characteristics.

[RobSteady]

Grimm, what's that image all about?

[grimm]

What do you mean? I was playing around with 3D-Coat for the stone and Blender with the grass. It ended up looking more like a close up of a Warhammer terrain model.

[smicha]

'Aperture edge' controls bokeh. Although it's not true bokeh for a certain lens.

[linvanchene]

obsolete post edited and removed by user

[glimpse]

Bokeh is like spices, but what it's important - piece of meat & some basic "products".

In other words, if You have a nice scene, rich of small detail (reflection, refractions, shadow & light) full of colour You can get nice bokeh even with simple round shapes.

Photographers pay thousands of dollars to get round nice bokeh (Leica Noctilux 50mm .95 cost like 11k$..) & is considered to be the king of bokeh..

What I mean to say, that 3dArtists try to do opposite what photographers try to achieve.. ('cos bokeh do tell a bit about quality of lens).

Think the first thing we as 3d artist need to worry is complex enough scenes to get nice bokeh before we try to mess with it shape & such. I haven't seen works that were spoiled by 'bad' bokeh shape, but I've seen ton of those that lack of details to get at least simple bokeh in first place =)

I do agree that engines could have more variables to tweak the shape - I'm not against that..but even if they give this option a lot will fail way before even scratching a surface with those options..

[Silverwing]

I agree that more settings in the bokeh field would be appreciated.
Especially some texture controlled bokeh shapes (with with you also can achieve bokeh aberration) would be really fantastic.

Having said that I think you can get quite good Bokeh results out of octane.
There are some really good artists working with octane that got phantastic results out of the engine!

From a photographers point of view the current computer graphic Bokeh options provided by render engines seem VERY LIMITED.

Octane as every other physically plausible renderer that is depth of field enabled renders bokeh as it would have been shot through a perfect lens with no aberration etc.
The circle of confusion is rendered to the picture the right way.

This is one of the main reasons why computer graphic images with many different light sources still look "fake". Light sources in the out of focus areas should produce colored bokeh effects but they don't.

To achieve this effect you either can use a special bokeh map. This would be some kind of fake solution to give the bokeh more life (if the renderer allows it) or you´d end up having to simulate a lens on top of the CG camera with all the lensing glass and with its aberration etc. If you do that you´ll get all the nice tonalities (like different shapes and coloring depended on the position in the picture etc.) But also your render times would be astronomical.

I think if your bokeh looks to "clean" your CG-Scene might be missing variation. If you obscure the view, make the reflections slightly uneven in distribution as well in intensity you will get more realistic bokeh I think.

Here´s one of my renders where that trick worked out quite well!


I´m with you in saying that some additional controll would be really great in that area. But I´m also saying that xou already can achieve some really good results already!

Cheers,
Raphael

[TogTobias]

Great detail in some of the replies on this post and they address exactly what I'm talking about. Before I was a CG artist, I was a professional photographer for many years. I still shoot once in a while but that's another story. Anyway, yes bokeh is actually very important in a photo realistic image. Octane is already a premiere render engine that touts this very claim to photo realism right in the "selling points". I love it. Purchasing Octane is something I'm thoroughly happy about. I just want to see this go further in quality and knock it out of the park. Bokeh simulation is an integral part of great compositing work and it would be quite amazing to have the controls in Octane that another user mentioned in this thread with regard to iris blades, dispersion, etc. all built into the existing Octane camera tag.

I've attached my best attempt at pushing this to the limits in Octane 2.06. I'm not saying it's a good example but from what I can tell, this is the best that's going to happen in Octane at present. It's not bad by any means. It could go a lot further with more control though.