Genuine Fractals aka perfect-resize7 for animation

[neon22]

Lightroom3 test:
Lightroom3 does appear to do a better job upsizing than perfectresize7
... However, lightroom3 does not except .bmp ...

so - yes save in tiff from TG2

But even if you do this, you are only able to resize when exporting from Lightroom at the end of the process, this would be fine but for the fact that sharpening the resized image would have to be done blind, or in another program making the workflow even more cumbersome....

The resize should do the job independently of additional effects like sharpening.

Of course its nice to be able to process images to shift exposure, gamma or do other effects as well. Typically you might use a compositing package like Nuke for this - but its very expensive. If you are prepared to tune the effect by hand, Imagemagick makes a good command line tool.
Doing several passes on the image sequence is not neccesarilly a problem. I.e. from 100 rendered images, make 100 new images upsized, then run another process to create 100 gamma corrected images, etc...

Many people use Virtualdub or After Effects as cheaper alternatives to Nuke. (but only 8bit IIRC)
Virtualdub has many useful filters for sharpen and hue adjustments changes, etc
(http://www.virtualdub.org  and filters http://neuron2.net/)

E.g. For Imagemagick - using the commandline after installing allows you to do this:

Code Select Expand

Convert format from bmp to png
convert image1.bmp image1.png

for a sequence of TG2 images:
convert "imagename.*.bmp" imagename.%04d.png

to also stretch the contrast:
convert "imagename.*.bmp" -contrast-stretch 0 imagename.%04d.png

to sharpen and contrast stretch:
convert "imagename.*.bmp" -sharpen 5 -contrast-stretch 0 imagename.%04d.png

etc...

other useful filters are:
-gamma and -levels allow you control over these aspects,
-adaptive-contrast, -brightness-contrast -sigmoidal-contrast
-color-matrix, -composite, -unsharp
-motion-blur, -enhance, -liquid-rescale,
see docs...http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php

What is your profession if i may ask?
There are too many links ... Can you give some links for the " information theory " subject that you think are good neon22, preferably without much math?

Sorry - almost by definition - information theory is all about the math. Wikipedia is a good start.
as for me - I was in VFX for 25 years but now retired (Hmmm.. maybe not... sigh)

Video Enhancer:
Windows only, sorry cant test. looks nice though, particularly if you are an editor/compositor.

Pity - looked like a good contender actually even if its more oriented towards filmed footage instead of synthetic - which never wobbles around... (follow that link above about super resolution - its an interesting example of an approach using adjacent video frames to increase the SNR (signal to noise) ratio of the image. Just like the faked effect in all TV Crime shows where they can see the license plate after zooming in on a blurry pic.)

[Kadri]

Thanks , Neon22 !

I tried some animations and  i think it is useful in some situations .
In fact i read that some HD movies-series where rendered in half HD in the past.
I think the last Battlestar Galactica series was rendered half Hd - or so i remember it said somewhere.
I just wanted to know what they use !
The standard Virtualdub resizing with some sharpen and contrast isn't much bad too

But i had flicker in the renders. It is annoying !
Higher settings did reduced them but not completely.

These are my first tests with animation since i bought TG2 with animation.
So there could be maybe some combination to make them better.
But there is definitely room for improvement in the animation side.
I hope the new animation update will resolve some and hopefully all of them

I have a last render going on. If there is less flicker i will post it here when it is ready.

[TheBadger]

Hello,

I need to know if .bmp is better than .tiff? If I render animations out to .bmp or .tiff, what are the pros and cons?! Love .exr, but tonemapping terragen renders is not giving me the best results.

[Kadri]

Not much difference for this kind of work but you should read the pros and cons in general.

http://www.wfu.edu/~matthews/misc/graphics/formats/formats.html
http://designer-info.com/Web/bmp_tiff_jpeg_gif.htm

Just two links from many...

How is the test going ,TheBadger ?

[neon22]

I need to know if .bmp is better than .tiff? If I render animations out to .bmp or .tiff, what are the pros and cons?!

There is no quality difference between the 8bit formats.
BMP is bigger than Tiff else they are the same. TG2 currently does not combine the alpha and RGB so no other advantages.

The main reason to choose one over the other is determined by the applications that follow on.
E.g.
SGI file format is in the list (presumably) because some toolchains in VFX still use this format.
BMP is windows standard and so is likely to be read by most windows programs.
EXR is the 'best' for a standardised HDR export with most likelihood of being correctly interpreted by external apps needing this.

as for me I would prefer PNG. In the future Planetside have indicated we may see other channels of the render (e.g. specular) becoming available - this will llikely add more formats to the list.

I think the last Battlestar Galactica series was rendered half Hd - or so i remember it said somewhere.
I just wanted to know what they use !
The standard Virtualdub resizing with some sharpen and contrast isn't much bad too

But i had flicker in the renders. It is annoying !
Higher settings did reduced them but not completely.

Yes - flicker in some aspects of images is still visible in the animations. I am sure they are working on it. It is of course critical.
Make sure you have GI off, or make large GI blur radius settings (but slower  ). Use several lights (see other threads) instead of GI to get suitable lighting.


Yes rendering at 720P then scaling to 1080P seems common. Lanczos or sinc1024 scaling.
The circle of confusion calculations indicate that 720P is indiscernable from 1080p when viewed on a 36 inch (or smaller) screen and at a normal viewing distance.

So If you're rendering for film... nope...
but if its for TV then 720P and an upscale seems like a cost effective solution.

Boggle your mind with choices here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1440p

[Kadri]

Neon22 , i use Oshyan's fill light setup .
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=580.0
I put the the time i gain here to the other higher quality settings

[TheBadger]

Thank you for writing the info Neon, and for the links Kadri.

It will be a day or two (maybe less) before I will post more test results, we have a little one here, and it can be hard to find extra time for this. Plus I had hoped to see Kadri's test results so as not to repeat anything un-nessareraly.

[Kadri]

I render a last test with motion blur on. I think it will make the video better.
The last i made is not so bad. But i changed the scene.
I think the towers are a little to much stressing for TG2 as an animation.
I use now a basic landscape. Nearly the same without the towers but a little more displaced.
I will upload them tonight or tomorrow , TheBadger

[TheBadger]

Kardi,

Please make sure to note your settings, render time per frame, and total render time. Thanks and good luck.

[Kadri]

...
Please make sure to note your settings, render time per frame, and total render time. Thanks and good luck.

Thanks.

Thats not much of a problem because i will post the scene too .

I render at two computers and with constantly changing used core numbers .
When my son wants to play games the render cores goes from 4 to 2  .
I think he doesn't like TG2 . At least finds it annoying at best !
I nearly can read from his face "don't use my pc"

[Kadri]

A little big 7z ( http://www.7-zip.org/ )compressed file... 54 Mb  !

Here is it:
http://www.terragen.org/index.php?action=tpmod;dl=item601

The TG2 animation file , Xvid videos , Virtualdub settings file and the BMP files of the last 2 renders.
Please read the Read_me.Text in the 7z file for some more information.
Do your own tests with the available BMP files or better use your own settings then render and post the results here.

For time reasons i used small renders.
It is usable if you ask me !
There is flicker but i think if we used half sized renders (720p) and with higher settings they would look very better.
Not sure but the motion blurred ones doesn't look better to me. I thought they would be better.
It would be good if someone who is accustomed to TG2 animation would look at the settings.
It is new to me as i said above .

Super Resize is better in general then the internal resize filter in Virtualdub but it had more pronounced horizontal lines as if there was a interlace problem (thus i used the field bob -smooth/smooth- filter in Virtualdub)
Not sure if this is a local problem or anything related to my settings.

I made many tests but uploaded the last two ones only.

I have enough for now

What do you think guys?

TheBadger , I don't have Photoshop here .
I could not use the batch operation of Perfectresize7.
Could you try it with the BMP files i posted please?
Thanks

[TheBadger]

TheBadger , I don't have Photoshop here . I could not use the batch operation of Perfectresize7.
Could you try it with the BMP files i posted please?
Thanks

Downloading files now. I will Make a movie with the .bmp frames in AfterEffects  and then resize them in perfectresize7, and make a second video. I will post them both here.

[TheBadger]

Hello

Here is a jpeg comparison of the results of Kardi's work, done in perfect resize.

I will post the videos just as before, as soon as I can. Happy to tell you that there were no real problems, and the video looks rather good.

[Kadri]

The sharpening Looks a little too harsh to me TheBadger, but it may look better in the video.

Please also be aware that when you render animations there is a Camera Blur setting which simulates motion blur. It is likely that this will have significant effect on the upsizing quality.
I suggest you try with and without motion blur factor. I.e. 0.0 and 0.5 to compare.
Specifically the 'Super Resolution' approach is affected by this. http://www.infognition.com/articles/when_super_resolution_doesnt_work.html
...

The bad looking (for me) blurred animation resizing is probably because of this Neon22 .

[TheBadger]

Using the frames Kardi provided (see above) I created two animations, one at the render size of 320X180, and the up-sized version at 640X360 using "perfectresize7". Check Kardi's post above for other versions of the test.

320X180 here: http://vimeo.com/27216940

Resized to 640X360 here: http://vimeo.com/27217079

The sharpness of the resized version may be a little high, this is an option and others would likely make a different choice. But to compare to the first test on page 2, I think its clear we are closing in on the % one can safely upsize with little down side.

Also, after looking at the other tests, my opinion is that perfectresize7 is the best option for this kind of work. Since the program works on each frames as if it where a photograph. Its just a matter of finding the % you can increase with good results.

Would like to hear what others think!