If possible, it would be nice to have a blur in the HDR rollout. 
You know what would be great tooā¦ if you changed that avitarā¦ it is freaking me outā¦
Ah wellā¦ itās run its course.
Thatās what I love most about firefox, easy one click avatar blocking. 
wow.. totally off topic by second postā¦ well done guys :shock:
Blur would be really handyā¦ agreed!!
Maybe even a downsize option to speed up renders perhaps.
kiss and make up boys!
Back on topicā¦ I agree and HDR Blur would be great. If they do that, a Circle Convolved blur option would be great for a better defocus.
a Circle Convolved blur option What is that?!?
It is a blurring method that mimics a defocus better. Photoshop CS2 has a fancy version of it called Lense Blur. Works really well with HDRIs since it blooms the highlights correctly instead of washing them out like a gaussian blur can do.
So this would actually be a āblur with bloomingā within the mat rollout - an additional option to a standard HDR blur. Sounds like a great idea!
hmmm.. the filter you are talking about in Photoshop CS2 doesnt work on ā32bitsā images. It only supports ā16bitsā images.
Maybe I have miss something ā¦ but if you use it on your HDR EXR or basicly any true high dynamic range image it means that you also lost all the hdri infos.
After applying this filter and saving your image if you use this image with Vray its exactly the same that if you were using a jpg insteadā¦
Only Photogenics HDR or HDR Shop would support such a filter without destroying the hdri infos.
n6:
I just had a play with it then, (all in PS) if you change the HDR back to 16bit then apply the lens blur then change it back to 32bit and save as a HDR.. it actually looks fine. Certainly doesnt behave like a JPG.
Tested in in HDRshop changing thru the exposure levels and it looks pretty good.
So thumbs up in my books
here we goā¦
Original image EXR 32 bits
Same 32bits with exposure -4
Same 32bits with exposure -10
Now I have converted the image to 16bits then I converted back to 32bits (thats what you said)
Exposure -4 :
Exposure -10
So, sorry but I confirm what I have previously said : when you use the lens blur filter in Photoshop CS2 you need to work with 16 bits image WICH IS NOT ANYMORE AN HDRI IMAGE :lol: even if you convert it back to 32bits
This said, I agree that it would be very cool if VRay could do itself some ābasicsā post filtering such as HDR bluring, glow etcā¦ in true HDR mode.
According to my test it works just fine using a proper 32bit HDR not EXR (i have not tested with a EXR out of vray)
Left side, is a blurred HDR using the method i showed earlier and the right side is the original HDR.
Preview shots taking in HDRshop
What you are doing is working with half dynamic range format (16 bit).
True HDR or EXR should allways be 32bit that is the full dynamic range.
That said, you are right : you would have more lighting info with a 16 bit HDR than with a 8 bit jpg.
When Chris mentioned the blur, I donāt think he was saying that he applied the defocus to HDRs in Photoshop but just saying he would like to see something similar to it working within a HDRās values.
Photoshop CS2 is very limited in what it can do with HDR images. Pretty much any filters that can be applied needs to be applied in 16 bit or 8 bit as they had not rewritten many of their plugins to accomdate HDR or EXR. This switch in bit-rate removes the floating point information of such an image type.
Thank ylou Jujubeeā¦ jeezā¦ Any real compositing package will support full float on their circle convolved blur. I was simply listing Photoshop since many of you donāt use Nuke or Shake. Try it in HDR Shop
ahh rightā¦ gotcha
Just in reading your original post it seems like you were getting at that PS Lens blur works really well with HDRās.
Thanks for clearing it up.
Ok let me rephrase itā¦ 
I can see how it is confusing.
ā¦
It is a blurring method that mimics a defocus better. Photoshop CS2 has a fancy version of it called Lense Blur. THE METHOD (not photoshop since it doesnāt do it in full float) Works really well with HDRIs since it blooms the highlights correctly instead of washing them out like a gaussian blur can do.