How do YOU do chromatic aberration?
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I wanted to start a thread for this, just curious how other people are doing this I mostly work in stills but post your techniques 2d, 3d, after effects, photoshop, 3ds max, maya what ever.
For me:
In photoshop filter> distor> lens correction> fix red/cyan fringe -15 or more depending on the look you want.
For me:
In photoshop filter> distor> lens correction> fix red/cyan fringe -15 or more depending on the look you want.
Replies
I'm with Moosey_G, why do you want to do this?
_Revel
and a video: http://vimeo.com/7720630
Jocoose: Its a camera error people are unconsciously used to seeing. much like vignette and grain. it helps to remove the cg feel and make something appear more film like. Like anything tho hamfisted application looks crap.
Using a filter would seem to be easier, although there doesn't seem to be anything by default in AE (unless I'm missing it), I think you can buy plugins which include the functionality though.
And r_fletch_r's description is spot on - any effect like this, if applied inappropriately or heavy-handedly, will look rubbish instead of subtly cool. I'm pretty sure I've been guilty of that in the past
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/499159/m7render02.jpg
Also, channel offseting isn't really the "correct" way to do it, if we're talking about how cameras actually work etc.
I use a mask to adjust how much each area moves, more on the edges, less in the center. I do this channel by channel. But I've only done this one one product shot, and it was only because there was a ton of glass. Other than that...
http://vimeo.com/7809605
It's not his 3d models and textures that make them look great, it's all the post process work he's doing which really make's it look photo real. Vignette, bloom, depth of field, chromatic abberation, colour correction, noise, I like to use all of these in my renders for realism or stylized renders. I also like lens flares, I feel the whole lens flares are cheesy comment is due to bad art not a bad effect. Like any effect you can do a bad job of tuning it and then it will look cheesy. Ever seen the movie star trek 2009 I think there's a lens flare in every single shot, it's like they intentionally pointed the camera into a light whenever they could I thought that movie looked extremely good and well art directed.
http://andrewsidea.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/startrek1.jpg
You can get a comic book style printing misalignment effect when you offset CMYK though
yeah the break downs are the most impressive part of those videos, the renders were pretty meh okay before all the effects got added in.
But right now Chromatic abberation seems to be like a "lense flare" effect, because people are only using it and are abusing it.
Is it too heavy-handed?
http://www.greveson.co.uk/dump/ibanez_wip_12.jpg
Oh and my method is to just use the photoshop filter. Often times I'll do it a couple times, I'll do it slightly to the highlights, a little heavier to the DOF/bokeh, then slightly heavier to the edges of the screen, these are the usual areas CA appears in an image.
Im really stoked to see these effects being used in games, Camera work in games is in general getting so much better. Seeing people make the effort to emulate physical cameras is awesome. ME2 had some nice 'Handheld' shots as far as i recall. (speaking of ME I cant wait to see how they put some of the new ue3 color grading effects)
The ground plane has a mid-grey slightly reflective material, the plane has been extruded up at two of the sides so it's like half a shoebox.
Then I've just got a single area light on the left (which is what's causing the bright highlight from the left), and a fully-white emissive set of 4 quads arranged to look like a fake window to the right (causing the window reflection you can see clearly on the volume control knob).
I'm beginning to see that having a proper environment (or at least a good cubemap/sphere map, especially if you have an HDRI one) is a big factor in getting a photorealistic render. I'll probably construct a little room with some objects in it and some light sources for my final render, just so the reflections and lighting look believable.
these are free and very good quality
http://www.crazy8studio.com/hdr.php
http://www.debevec.org/probes/
The Funston Beach at Sunset I found works quite well because it's not too noisy. By the way are you doing your depth of field in post in photoshop or is that out of the 3d package?
Are we still not over that lens flare joke?