Lens effects preview

[Vizioen]

So trying to apply lens effects to a 5K visual, is a hell, especially when you're still trying different settings to get the desired look. So I was wondering maybe to speed things up, there could be some sort of selection box where the lens effects are only calculated for that part of the visual so you get faster feedback. When you're happy with your settings you can apply it to the whole image.

[kosso_olli]

So trying to apply lens effects to a 5K visual, is a hell

Are you on Next? We apply the lens effects to renders of 13k width, and this is done in a few seconds. The old lens effects systems was painfully slow, but in Next it is very fast!

[Vizioen]

Yes I'm on Next. My workstation might not be as fast at it used to be (Dual Xeon E5-2695V2) and I don't have the best of GPUs (Quadro K4000). When I try to apply it takes a long time, plus my computer freezes completely. There might be a bug too because those input dialogues are just very very wonky and sometimes think I'm still changing values even though I'm not, so interactive isn't an option at all. Even though it might be hardware related, I think having some kind of selection focus as where the calculations have to take place might be a good solution for slower workstations.

[andy51]

I hardly ever use GPU, I render on a single i7 8700k and lens effects, for me at least, are definitely not slow and certainly never freeze my computer

The dial arrows, do not work as many others do, and cannot be dragged to adjust the value, which is a shame, although, without some work, I imagine if you could drag them, the values would change far too abruptly. You can only simply click either up or down arrows, to change the value by whatever increment it is set for.. Bloom/Glare > Size up or down my 1... Bloom by .1.. Filter rotation by 10

Though you can enter values manually, such as 30.25 for Size

Definitely not a bug, but yes it does need some work 1) to allow dragging on the dial arrows, although I can imagine that may be very laggy, if interactive is activated 2) If you click on a value, it should select that value and if you change it, from say 20, to 25, it should remain selected, so you can continue to change the value manually, until you again click, or select another value.

I do believe someone already discussed this in an older thread, but for the life of me, I cannot recall where that thread is.

[Vizioen]

Well as for the "bug", the slider of size/bloom sometimes gets stuck to my cursor, which means if I have interactive selected this thing goes bezerk because it's trying to update every change. That's where my computer probably freezes. I never use the GPU either because it's faster on my CPU. That being said I timed the time it takes to update a 5K x 5K render and it's around 22 seconds. While this might not be as slow as it used to be. If you want to try different values it's too long, where as if I put my focus around a certain area that is 20 times smaller than the full size render this would only take a second to update. So I still think it's a good idea to have something like this implemented.

[kosso_olli]

Well, changing values like glare size, rotation etc. takes a little more than 1 second on my machine with a GTX Titan. On a 5000x3750 render. It won't get faster than that...

[Vizioen]

Well you can't expect everyone to have GTX Titans

[andy51]

Not really a bug in my book, more an undesirable effect or as Microsoft are fond of putting it a "FEATURE". You only have to check out the many other tools and features of Max and V-Ray to see than these dials in the Lens effect dialog, aren't quite as smooth and responsive as they might be. Perhaps because they are a feature of the VFB.Your mouse cursor getting stuck , is something I have seen many times, in various applications, so certainly not a bug in V-Ray / Max. and I've certainly not witnessed it myself, when using lens effects. Yes it is true, as you said, that the lens effects controls are a little clunky, almost as if written for Windows 95 rather than Window 10.. A little rough and ready lets say... all they need is a bit of spit and polish and I am sure that could be improved. In fact maybe sliders would look nicer, rather than having those little arrows, that cannot be dragged, only clicked or values entered manually (my preference).. or maybe clicking on a value and using the keyboard up and down arrows... Whatever they do with it in the future, I do agree it needs work, but for me it certainly isn't so slow, that it causes my machine to freeze. Oh and a tabbed dialog box, would certainly tidy it up a lot. .. I have learnt so much the past 10 years, though I sometimes wish we had computer classes in school, back in the late 60's early 70's. If I'd had access to this kind of thing, when I was a kid, I can't even imagine what the technology would be like now

[piotrus3333]

maybe computing lens effects on cpu would be faster on your machine?

[Vizioen]

maybe computing lens effects on cpu would be faster on your machine?

The time of 22 seconds was on my CPU, it takes twice as long on GPU

[Vizioen]

Not really a bug in my book, more an undesirable effect or as Microsoft are fond of putting it a "FEATURE". You only have to check out the many other tools and features of Max and V-Ray to see than these dials in the Lens effect dialog, aren't quite as smooth and responsive as they might be. Perhaps because they are a feature of the VFB.Your mouse cursor getting stuck , is something I have seen many times, in various applications, so certainly not a bug in V-Ray / Max. and I've certainly not witnessed it myself, when using lens effects. Yes it is true, as you said, that the lens effects controls are a little clunky, almost as if written for Windows 95 rather than Window 10.. A little rough and ready lets say... all they need is a bit of spit and polish and I am sure that could be improved. In fact maybe sliders would look nicer, rather than having those little arrows, that cannot be dragged, only clicked or values entered manually (my preference).. or maybe clicking on a value and using the keyboard up and down arrows... Whatever they do with it in the future, I do agree it needs work, but for me it certainly isn't so slow, that it causes my machine to freeze. Oh and a tabbed dialog box, would certainly tidy it up a lot. .. I have learnt so much the past 10 years, though I sometimes wish we had computer classes in school, back in the late 60's early 70's. If I'd had access to this kind of thing, when I was a kid, I can't even imagine what the technology would be like now

Well yeah, in my case the stuck cursor bug has only showed him in the VFB of Vray and Camera RAW in Photoshop, I know it's not directly related to Vray.

Aaanyhow I feel I have a lot of resistance trying to push my wish because apparently all I need is a hardware upgrade, which is foreseen in a couple of months when the new threadrippers hit the market (hopefully). And hopefully a hardware upgrade will suffice to make the lens effects fast enough for interactive feedback.