Planetside Software Forums

Hello,

I have been reading the posts in this forum on the use of perfect-resize7 (AKA Genuine Fractals), along with other info sources. And am rather confident that I will be able to use the pro version to batch process a terragen folder containing animation frames. Im rather sure Ill be happy with the results. Just thinking of the time Ill save...!!! Anyway, I could only find a thread that discussed enlarging single renders. I wanted to give anyone who has already done this a chance to way in.

Money is a little tight these days and I don't want to spend the extra cash for the pro version, if someone out there knows I wont get what Im expecting.

I am expecting to be able to render small and resize big for animation. Batch process a 1000 frames or so (just a number)

I want to buy by the weekend, so if you have anything to say please post it.

Thanks everyone.

Do you need the Pro version? I thought it was more geared for print (CMYK, borders...), but the lower cost Standard Edition has the functionality that you need?

Click on Perfect Resize 7 - Compare Pro and Standard Editions.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/store/

^{Do you need the Pro version?}

Sorry, I thought the pro version was stand alone, I see my mistake now. Anyway, Im going to try it for animation, I cant think of any reason why it wont save hundreds of hours rendering in the future. But Im new to all of this, so if anyone knows better than I do, please say so.

Thanks

Quote from: TheBadger on July 28, 2011, 02:39:24 PM
^{Do you need the Pro version?}
Sorry, I thought the pro version was stand alone, I see my mistake now. Anyway, Im going to try it for animation, I cant think of any reason why it wont save hundreds of hours rendering in the future. But Im new to all of this, so if anyone knows better than I do, please say so.
Thanks

TheBadger , i would try the demo first with a short animation.
I am mostly not quite optimistic with such programs.
I tried the demo and it was good at attaining the edges in the picture i tried.
But if it does calculate the edges and so different in every render you made for the animation, the resulting video could have serious kind of flicker.
I have not heard that anybody uses this in a serious manner.
So you really should try before you buy it.

I wonder how well the rescaling of images holds up in this Perfect Resize. I remember some talk of an up-scaling app' in here before that resampled images to be enlarged but it wasn't this one and I never did try the one that was spoken about, can't even remember the name of it now.

dandelO,

see here=>http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8736.msg94286#msg94286

Kadri,

your right, I will try before I buy. Ill post the result on vimeo and link in this thread, then we will all know. Ill try it tonight.

Also, it seems that real detail has to be there in the first place. So I'm thinking low pixel size with high detail, in order to get large pixel size with same detail?

Ah, right. Probably the same program then. I think there was a thread about it on its own though that I was thinking of.

It's easy to confuse resizing with increasing detail.  If you think of a simple black line on a white background, that's quite easy to re-size without a loss of detail.  But you aren't going to gain detail either.  Often, the image looks better at the small size.

Re-sizing a gradient works pretty good too.  But a pattern is a different story.  Look at the image I made.  The top, #1, is a simple linear gradient zoomed from it's 100x5 to a 500x25  The second, #2, it the same 100x5 re-sized with Perfect Resize 7 (great results, though I do wonder why it re-sized the width to 504 instead of the 500 I set in the program.)

The third image is a 100x5 pattern zoomed to 500x25 and the fourth is re-sized to 500x25.

It would take a lot of testing to really determine how well it would work with a TG2 project.  I would guess soft edges would look better but harder edges, like a terrain/sky wouldn't.

That actually looks great, Jaf. The last image doesn't appear to be pixelated or aliased at all in comparison with the zoomed version.

Yes, I need to make some TG2 image tests.

Here's a small TG2 image (200 x 157) rescaled in Photoshop at 2x (bp8_f.jpg) and the same image rescale 2x in Perfect Resizer 7 (bp8_f_rs.jpg.)

Quoteimage rescale 2x in Perfect Resizer 7 (bp8_f_rs.jpg.)

Jaf,
Looks much better than photoshop. So this is another conformation that resizing is a good option for a single terragen render.

The question remains if batch processing will lead to a serious flicker from image shifting or what have you, as mentioned above. I am setting up a simple animation now and hope it will be ready early friday to test. Im also going to use adobe light room, I have read that even though it was not intended for this use, some have found better results than from perfect resize7 (less or no artifacts they say) and it is said to process faster.

will post here, via vimeo. Hope to compare with your results.

Thanks Jaf, and everyone.

P.S. It seems animation should be on the minds of all software makers making products for resizing... Wouldn't this kind of thing be in great demand by everyone who animates? 

http://www.infognition.com/VideoEnhancer/

I did not tried it and if you look here there are more:

http://www.infognition.com/articles/video_resize_shootout.html

Filters-programs like these could be maybe better for you , because these are directly for video.

That's the one I was thinking of before, Kadri. ^^

Quote from: dandelO on July 29, 2011, 06:21:19 AM
That's the one I was thinking of before, Kadri. ^^

:)

Kadri,

thanks for the info, I think VideoEnhancer may be of some use to me in the future. However, It is quite clear after looking at the samples on VideoEnhancers website, that both Perfect resize and lightroom give much higher quality results.
But the question remains, will batch processing with photo tools work as well for animation. If not than VideoEnhancer may be a solution.

Using "Tower Tutorial" by "schmeerlap", available here: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=12630.0
I created a simple animation to test in "perfect resize7".

Original animation
432x243
Detail: 0.8, A:5, GI: 3, 2, 8
No other changes were made

The animation took 2m30s per frame, for a total 3h17m14s to finish at 100 frames total.
Here is the un-resized original animation: http://vimeo.com/27063162

I then resized every frame in perfect resize to 1280x720 by batch process, batch processing takes very little time.
Here is the resized video: http://vimeo.com/27063337

As you can see, the resized image shows the lack of detail in the original much more clearly, but resizing, in and of its self, does not degrade quality to a high level.
It seams that if a animation render is done with high detail but small pix ratio, then the animation can be resized while maintaining high quality.

There was no additional flicker, though the flicker that was there became clearer.
The smaller the resize the better the results. I think that this is a viable way to save many hours rendering

My vimeo account is not premium, so it is not in HD, but you can still confirm my test.
Thanks, hope you will chime in!

This is an interesting test. I would like to see how objects are treated using this process, and with higher detail settings. I did not notice any artifacts caused by the resize.

You made me curious TheBadger!
I am rendering now the same scene with  higher settings too.
I want to see it without flickering if possible to judge the resizing better.

The result is quite impressive. I had quite a bit of doubts about this but it seems to be working very well, nice!

Because my vimeo account is not in HD, the HD video I uploaded was compressed down to whatever the max size a free account can have. So, The resized video is again changed back down in resolution, and it still looks nice:D

Anyway, so that everyone can see detailed results, here are frames from each videos to compare.

To be clear, I think my upsize from 432x243 to 1280x720, it very extreme. I would not make such a large jump on a real project. As I mentioned above my render time per frame was only 2min30s. I could easily live with twice that, I would even be content with 10min per frame, this would make a much higher quality video to begin with. The detail must be there to begin with, or the resize is pointless!

QuoteI am rendering now the same scene with  higher settings too.

Kadri, please post your results! Everything in terragen is about balance, but I haven't found a balance with settings, my system, and my expectations yet. It would be great if you are able (or anyone) to see more clearly a path to make resizing a real tool for us to have. And post it! :)

I will also do this test with adobe "darkroom3", and "VideoEnhancer". (free test versions)

Thanks

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 (http://www.infognition.com/articles/when_super_resolution_doesnt_work.html)

Also I would expect to see artifacts in the image using Perfect Resize 7 - the blur artifacts may become strengthened into more solid lines - which may be visually distracting.

So you may also wish to consider a slow camera motion and a fast one in your tests.

Good luck with your efforts. looing fwd to the results.

QuoteSpecifically the 'Super Resolution' approach is affected by this. http://www.infognition.com/articles/when_super_resolution_doesnt_work.html

Hello Neon,

My question then is, is upsizing using an Algorithm the same as compressing using a Codec?! ???
Are Algorithms and codecs two names for the same thing?

Quoteexpect to see artifacts in the image using Perfect Resize 7 - the blur artifacts may become strengthened into more solid lines - which may be visually distracting

can this problem be avoided by not compressing, or are you saying that an image is compressed during the process of resizing?

Quote from: TheBadger on July 30, 2011, 07:06:04 PM
... is upsizing using an Algorithm the same as compressing using a Codec?! ???
...

I am not a programmer but Algorithm's could be used anywhere in programs and filters etc. like videos and like TG2 too.
The thing is that upsizing and compressing do use some math but are different .
Upsizing does make the picture bigger (as we try here) obviously and compressing with codecs do make the video smaller (in megabyt , gigabyt etc) for use in any kind of media you want to use them.The video would be too big to use in standart media without a codec(compression) .
Most users do think that videos that have extensions like Avi or Mov etc. are codecs but they are only container formats.
They can have many kind of codecs used in them for the video they contain(!) (xvid , x264 , mpg ... ).
It looks a little confusing at first but when you begin to research it will be easier to understand in a short time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec
There is a little very nice but unfortunately in the last years not much developed program:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSpot
And as you see there you can use this too  to see what codec is used in the videos you have.
http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

Quote from: TheBadger on July 30, 2011, 07:06:04 PMMy question then is, is upsizing using an Algorithm the same as compressing using a Codec?! ???
Are Algorithms and codecs two names for the same thing?

A codec uses algorithms to do work.
An Algorithm just describes a way to do something.
A Codec is specific to taking data in one form and transforming it into another. Generally just used for multimedia streams. It comes from the word encoder/decoder and implies it can go in both directions (not always true).
Wikipedia is your friend here...

The main problem that you are trying to solve is to do with information theory and signal to noise ratios.
The problem could be rephrased this way:
"What is the lowest resolution you can render at and scale up, in order for the end result to look visually indistinguishable from a 'true' result."
True - in this sense - referring to a full resolution render.

Clearly you will lose information rendering at a lower resolution but the human visual system has some weak points which can be exploited by clever algorithms.
Amongst these aspects:

• We see edges formed from luminance (e.g. in grayscale) quite a bit better than we see those from just colour.
•     hence video is frequently compressed unevenly in the luminance and chrominance domains. Lookup 4:2:2 as an example. Common in TV codecs.
•     you can see the resize tools trying to maintain the visual edges (in your prev upscale examples)
• Dynamic range. Turns out we can use low spatial resoultions if we have higher dynamic range.
•     we used to print film at 2kx2K at 14 bits instead of 4kx4k at 8bits. even 1kx1k at 12bits was acceptable for a while.
•     rendering to openEXR format and then correcting to form a tone mapped image in a paint app is a useful way to control the exposures in a rendered image.
•     One day everyone will do this. Checkout the light-exposure control in Camera nodes
• Motion blur. Simulating the effect on your retina of motion in the scene. When things move quickly we perceive less of them.
•       you can render at lower res if you never slow down  :D
• Depending on our distance from the image - we need to consider "circle of confusion"
•      this leads us to DPI. Posters designed to be looked at on a wall do not need to be as high in resolution as those viewed in a book. The closer you get, the more you can see the gaps in between the pixels. This principle is frequently not well understood but also does not apply here as the output format has already - probably - been calculated for you.
•      E.g. for PAL video with square pixels, the calculations have been done and its 768x576

The signal to noise tradeoff is more to do with how compressed you can make the encoded files. This only matters if you need them small for transmission or if you have a 500Kb max image size upload to a (say) website  ;D

I don't expect anyone cares to but information theory has lots of academic stuff to say about this subject...

The end result is the question as stated above.
Tradeoffs are soft edges, new false edges, and loss of detail in slow moving sections.
Always process the highest quality original imagery you can (so not jpegs, which already have edge artifacts added and these false edges will be enhanced)

Quote from: neon22 on July 30, 2011, 07:53:36 PM
...
I don't expect anyone cares to but information theory has lots of academic stuff to say about this subject...
...

You sound like you know 1 or 2 things , Neon22  :D 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?

QuoteThis only matters if you need them small for transmission or if you have a 500Kb max image size upload to a (say) website 

lol, yep. I was thinking of asking staff if they would let us post the high res tests, so that everyone could really see whats going on in the results...after all the tests are in, and assuming they reveal a benefit to the terragen2 user. (Whenever someone complains about render time link them here.) But I don't know how interesting this is to anyone else, other than those of us who are participating in this thread. It might just seem like tricks and gimmicks to some. Maybe in the end it will be? But good results so far.

Also,

Quote"What is the lowest resolution you can render at and scale up, in order for the end result to look visually indistinguishable from a 'true' result."

I like that in perfectresize7 you are able to work on one image, make all your changes and save a preset. Makes answering the question a bit easier.

Going to try lightroom processing now, will post when its done.

Lightroom3 test:

Lightroom3 does appear to do a better job upsizing than perfectresize7

See here and go to bottom of page: http://www.have-camera-will-travel.com/field_reports/perfect-resize-7-pro-vs-ado/

However, lightroom3 does not except .bmp file type, or .exr and using .jpeg (as stated above) would be counter productive.

QuoteLightroom 3 supports more than 290 native camera raw file formats, in addition to DNG, TIFF, and JPEG files — in other words, the formats primarily used in digital cameras. In addition, Lightroom 3 also supports the Photoshop PSD file format for enhanced integration with Photoshop CS5. For a complete list of manufacturers and models supported in Camera Raw, see the camera raw page.

If one wanted to, it is possible to convert each frames file extension to .psd or to (output animation from terragen2 with .tiff (correct?).
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. For a detailed explanation of the process see here: http://www.digital-photography-school.com/how-to-resize-images-in-lightroom-2

Test result: Fail- Not practical.
If we are only replacing render time with a convoluted workflow, I don't see how the situation has really improved.
Additionally, perfectresize7 has built in presets for all standard video sizes including HD, one need only render out of terragen in the same aspect ratio as the target size and then  visually apply whatever sharpening and effects you like, save a new preset, batch process, and your done.

Next test, "VideoEnhancer": http://www.infognition.com/VideoEnhancer/

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

Will continue testing perfectresize7 this week with better methods.

Thanks

Quote from: TheBadger on July 31, 2011, 12:50:02 AM
Lightroom3 test:
...
If one wanted to, it is possible to convert each frames file extension to .psd or to (output animation from terragen2 with .tiff (correct?).
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.
...
Test result: Fail- Not practical.

I have heard much more cumbersome methods for things in the 3D world :)
I think it is not so bad especially if you count the render time for good looking renders in TG2.

Quote from: TheBadger on July 31, 2011, 12:50:02 AM
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

Quote from: TheBadger on July 31, 2011, 12:50:02 AMBut 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 (http://www.virtualdub.org)  and filters http://neuron2.net/ (http://neuron2.net/))

E.g. For Imagemagick - using the commandline after installing allows you to do this:
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 (http://www.imagemagick.org/script/convert.php)

Quote from: Kadri on July 30, 2011, 08:21:54 PM
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)

Quote from: TheBadger on July 31, 2011, 02:38:04 AM
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.)

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.

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.

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 ?

Quote from: TheBadger on August 01, 2011, 02:53:25 PMI 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.

Quote from: Kadri on August 01, 2011, 12:57:05 PM
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

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 :)

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.

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 :)

Kardi,

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

Quote from: TheBadger on August 01, 2011, 10:52:23 PM
...
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" :D

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 :)

Quote from: Kadri on August 02, 2011, 10:22:35 AM
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.

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.

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

Quote from: neon22 on July 30, 2011, 05:48:48 PM
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 (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 .

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!

Quote from: Kadri on August 02, 2011, 06:29:29 PM
The bad looking (for me) blurred animation resizing is probably because of this Neon22 .

Kadri, I think it is the compression in this case. If you look at the jpg I posted above your frame is crisp. If the original had been larger, say 864x486, then we could have increased by two or two and a half times with no problem, I think.

Quote from: TheBadger on August 03, 2011, 12:43:49 AM
...
Kadri, I think it is the compression in this case. If you look at the jpg I posted above your frame is crisp. If the original had been larger, say 864x486, then we could have increased by two or two and a half times with no problem, I think.

The settings in Xvid are not bad but it could be!

Thanks for the test TheBadger  :)
The way Super Resize and Perfectresize7 does the resizing is obviously different.
Perfectresize7 does make the edges look very sharp.
As you said  there are options , but i think it makes the video a little to synthetic looking.
I would use Super Resize at X 2 settings if i have to (without the bad horizontal lines hopefully).

But this is kinda subjective probably ;)

This was a good exercise for me thanks for the thread TheBadger !

TheBadger i made some tests with another old animation i had.
I used the internal warp filters in Virtualdub.
It surprised me that they looked very identical to the method "Perfectresize7" seems to use.
I tried it with an image i resized wit "Perfectresize7" and with Virtualdub warp resize.
They look so close :)

Below is a screen cap from Virtualdub and the image you posted here before .
They are not the same...But very close.

Kardi,

That looks really good! I think if I had been more careful in my resize (sharpen) settings than they would look the same. If the programs produce the same results, than the question is which is cheaper, or which gives you more for your money. Also, in my case, do they both work on a mac?

I think that in the end it is safe to say that resizing is a viable tool! I am working on a TG2 project now. It has lots of objects and clouds that will be in motion (the clouds), I will try a resize on that one when it is finished, it will be awhile though, Im not very far along yet and I start a new job on monday. Anyway, I am aiming for an HD render 720, which I will upsize to 1080, if everything works out, I want to test something Neon22 said earlier. But if render time is to long I will do it at 864x486.

Learned a lot from this! Thanks Kardi, and neon22, and anyone who has been reading.

Also,

Dont forget this example: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8736.msg94286#msg94286

We have shown that resizing does not add problems to a render where animation is concerned. And the link above shows you can go very large if the detail is there to begin with.

So, I guess my last questions are what do the TG2 experts think? What does staff think? What should we know that has not been brought up already?

Thanks.

I would say that is would make 'proofing' a video from Terragen 2 much faster. You could see some of the problems before starting the long render process of 1200 frames at 1920 x 1080.

Quote from: TheBadger on August 04, 2011, 02:39:26 AM
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Dont forget this example: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8736.msg94286#msg94286
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But please keep MacGyver post in mind too http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=8736.msg94327#msg94327

Some users with good eyes will always know that you cheated.
I have seen this in some tv series. Blurred textures without much detail.
But probably 90% of the people would not know whats going on .
At least not consciously !

You said clouds in your post. Use what you learned in your experiment here.
I know that you can get away with small renders with clouds , fire and similar things.
I think mostly nobody would know it , if you use the right  parameters :)

Edit:

Quote from: TheBadger on August 04, 2011, 02:33:17 AM
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If the programs produce the same results, than the question is which is cheaper, or which gives you more for your money. Also, in my case, do they both work on a mac?
...

Virtualdub is free open source and the warp resize filter comes within.
But i am afraid only for Windows!

Perfectresize7 does have some other settings but i would use Virtualdub.
The outcome is so close i do not feel the need for Perfectresize7 .
You can export images (as a sequence) from Virtualdub.
So you can use it for images only too.

Edit:

"Warp sharp is the name of an algorithm that I originally found coded as a filter for an image editing application called "The GIMP."
It's based on the idea that if you can identify the edges in an image, you can warp the image to shrink the edges and thus make them appear sharper."
From here:
http://www.virtualdub.org/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=79
The post is from 2005.
Wonder how the "Perfectresize7" method works or from where(!)it is!

http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Smart_Sharpening/warp-sharp.html
http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/gimp/warp-sharp.html

Gimp is enough it seems  :)