Maxwell Render | Official public forum

I thought that we now had shift lens in 1.5

Where's that in the C4D Plugin?

TIA

Adri

.not directly in plugin.
.you control it through cinema camera properties.

patrikpanda wrote:.not directly in plugin.
.you control it through cinema camera properties.

Which is a very good move towards deeper integration of the plugin. Your camera shift lens in the x and y are carried over to Maxwell Render from the plug-in.

can you explain, how you do it?

In the "Object" tab of the camera attributes set the "Film Offset X" and "Film Offset Y" up and down. The view will update as you do it and you can set the best composition.

For ArchViz you would usually want a camera with no pitch or bank rotation (or a target camera with the camera and target at the same Y value) and use the "Film Offset Y" to place the building in the frame, this way you get the building edges parallel to the edge of the image and you don;t have to have the horizon in the middle of the image (vertically).

Again, this is the C4D camera object properties, nothing to do with the Cinemaxwell plug-in, it will read those values.

D

thanks for the help!!!

Adri

thanks. I was wondering what this setting was for.... but to lazy to look it up.

To be honest I'd like to use his feature bu still have no clue how to use it.

Say I have a building and a camera at normal eye height, 1600mm. So whenever I use this shift lense with y-offset he camera is either moving up or down, what I don't want to have (the picture is missing half the building in the editor view, so I didn't een render it) or below the floor what I don't want to have either. So can someone explain this behaviour to me and to use it?

Is the dito view just different from what we are getting in the end, or is it as we see it in the editor? How do I make use of the shift lense?

1. Keep your camera leveled, just heading in the right direction
2. Now set offset y to -xx% to shift the cam

Hope it helps

Kabe

Using shift lenses make buildings look terrible.

Becco_UK wrote:Using shift lenses make buildings look terrible.

Full agree!!

Becco_UK wrote:Using shift lenses make buildings look terrible.

I wonder why just about EVERY Architectural Photographer (real photography, not rendering) uses a shift lens then.

While I agree that it can look pretty bad if you do not know how to use it and exagerate the effect too much, it looks much better than not using it in most situations.

If you are rendering a really tall building and your camera is relatively close to the building and you need to look up a lot, then don't use shift lens. On the other hand, if you have a building just few stories high and you are not having to look up much, it is much more natural to see the edges of the building parallel to the image frame. True, in real life we see the distortion of parallax, but your eyes do not have a vertical frame in the way that a photo or computer image does so it still looks straight up and down.

Quite frankly, every time I see a building rendered with the edges missaligned to the edge of the image, I cringe...

It all a matter of preference anyway. I would not want to encroach on anybody's right to be wrong...

D

dyarza: I suppose real shift lenses are used a lot due to environmental constraints - other buildings get in the way. With 3d those sort of constaints are virtually non existent. It is not necessary to use a shift lens to keep edges vertical.

As with most things graphically though - it's in the eye of the beholder!

Becco_UK wrote:Using shift lenses make buildings look terrible.

I think that you mix between shift and tilt lenses. Using tilt lenses makes
buildings look terrible, and because most shift lenses are shift/tilt lenses
some people think so for shift as well.

However, using a shift lens is just the *same* as using a wider angle lens to
shoot and then cut the image. Contrary to tilt it does not introduce any special
distorsion that would not exist in real life.

Becco_UK wrote:With 3d those sort of constaints are virtually non existent. It is not necessary to use a shift lens to keep edges vertical.

Well, you have exactly three options to get stright verticals:
1. Shoot with level camera & cut the image
2. Use with level camera and shift the lens (which is just the same as 1.)
3. Use an orthographic camera

There is not other option. The only freedom you have is to use
narrow-angled lenses that you can't use in real life.

Kabe

thanks for the help. used it finally on one render and that looks fine to me.