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Taronites ZbornToy
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The Stats
- Developer: Taronites, Frischluft
- Version: 1.2
- Platforms: Windows, Mac
- Host Applications: Adobe After Effects
- Compatibility with After Effects 7 and Mac Universal Binary
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Purchuse Zborn Toy
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Description
ZbornToy extracts a maximum of information out of simple depth images and allows you to not only light and texture them, but to refract backgrounds, cast caustic reflection back onto the background and a whole lot more.
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Download After Effects 7 Compatability for Version 1.0
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Basic Parameters
- Render Mode - Chose the type of operation that should be performed by the plugin.
- All - Computes all used features
- Refraction - Only computes only refractions and skips all lighting and shading.
- Caustix - Only computes only caustic projections and skips shading and refractions.
- Shadows - Only computes only shadows...
- Highlights - Only computes only highlights and reflections...
- Normalmap - Outputs the surface normal image, either computed normals or the chosen normal texture.
- Depthmap - Outputs the depth image with all modifications that have been applied by the user.
- Surface color - Outputs the surface color as it was designed by the user.
- Depth factor - Multiplies the pixel values to define the depth from original values 0 to 1.0. Whereby 0.0(black) is the background and 1.0(white) is the foreground and therefore closest to the camera. It also corresponds directly with the 'alpha depth factor' provided by pixologic's Zbrush. Should the depth image be in float format and contain actual depth values, a multiplier of 1.0 would preserve the original values.
- Perspective Perception - Interprets camera lens openings to compute specular highlights, reflections and refractions.
- Gamma Correction - An option to apply a change in gamma for the internal computation.
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Lights
This topic offers the control over all sources of illumination we offer. There are three different kinds of them: direct light, point light and environmental illumination.
- Direct Light
- Light Intensity - Intensity of light
- Light Color - Color of light
- Light Size - Size of the light source, effects diffuse and specular shading as well as translucency
- Direct Light Angle - Defines direction in which the direct light shines. Since it is a parallel light, suggesting to come from infinity, the pointer represents the direction like the pointers on a clock
- Light Forward Angle - Rotates the light forward along the direction angle. Default position 0.0 points directly along z-axis and therefore wouldn't show any change of the light angle. Value is read as radiance, therefore a value of around 1.57 (half PI) represents a 90 degree rotation to line up with the screen plane.
- Shadows - Enables shadows
- Shadow Softness - Determines smoothing iterations for the shadows to simulate soft shadows
- Point Light
- Light Intensity - Intensity of light
- Light Color - Color of light
- Light Size - Size of the light source, effects diffuse and specular shading as well as translucency
- Light Falloff - Defines the radial fade of the light intensity
- Attenuation Color - Defines the color the illumination attenuates to during falloff
- Position - This is the x/y position of the point light
- Z Position - This is the depth position of the point light and is absolute. Changes in the depth factor will not keep the light relative to the new depth!
- Shadows - Enables shadows
- Shadow softness - Determines smoothing iterations for the shadows to simulate soft shadows
- Environment
- Environmental Image - Layer to be used as environment
- Environment Type - Currently there are two types supported. The panoramic type interprets the image to be wrapped on a sphere around the entire scene and ideally is used with an image that loops perfectly horizontally and has proper polar regions (top and bottom prepared to avoid squeeze!) The spherical type is in support of spherical HDR footage and interprets an image as if it was the reflection over a chrome sphere. It's not only the fastest type, it also makes it very easy to create your own pseudo illumination by creating such an environment layer yourself.
- Reflection Amount Texture - Layer to control amount of reflectivity
- Reflection Amount - Defines the amount of contribution the image provides to the reflection
- Bias Reflection Brightness - Uses a bias function to control the brightness levels of the chosen layer seen as reflections. For example, if you only would like to see highlights reflected from the image you would use a negative bias like for instance -0.99!
- Illumination Amount - Defines the amount of diffuse illumination coming from the chosen layer
- Blur Illumination - Defines the amount of blur used on the chosen layer. A value of 0.0 would result in a sharp representation of the image and would look much like a reflection. A value of 1.0 would completely diffuse the chosen layer and usually is what you would want most of the time, particularly when you make use of photographs.
- Quick Mode - Enables quick mode for the ambient occlusion approximation
- Occlusion Amount - Defines the strength of the ambient occlusion. 1.0 represents 100% use of the occlusion approximation and is usually desirable.
- Occlusion Radius - Determines the radius which will get examined by the occlusion approximation and is measured in pixels
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Original Image
This section offers ways to manipulate or use aspects of the layer the plugin is applied to. For simplicity reasons we call this layer 'original image'!
- Additive Mix - By default the color mix parameter multiplies the surface color with the color of the original image. Checking on the additive mix changes the multiplication into an addition. Effectively this eans the original colors brighten up the surface color, when color mix is increased!
- Color Mix - Defines the amount of color of the original image contributed to the surface color.
- Saturation - Controls the saturation of the original image. Effects can mostly be seen when color mix is increased, but since it effects the color information coming from the original image this parameter can effect the depth values, interpreted for all the 2.5d processes. The saturation parameter also has an automatic chroma correction implemented!
- Depth Bias - Applies a bias function to the original image before getting interpreted as a depth image!
- Depth Gain - Applies a gain function to the original image before getting interpreted as a depth image!
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Geometry
The ZbornToy interprets the original image as a 3d object and derives height as well as surface normals from its pixel values. The result of it we call geometry and offers several ways of manipulating and correcting the interpretation of it.
- Normal Texture - Normal maps can be used as an alternative to the internal computation of surface normals. If low resolution geometry was used for the depth image, computed surface normals could reveal the facets of them. A provided normal layer with smooth normals would avoid such an appearance! Choosing a normal texture will also skip the computation of the normals and will speed up the rendering by some minor percentage.
- Depth Channel - Chose the color channel or combined luminance, which shall be used as depth values. Hint: since After Effects always splits off grayscale images into it's color components, you could skip a few computations by choosing any color channel instead of luminance.
- Pre Blur Strength - Defines the strength of the distribution of one pixel to it's surrounding pixels.
- Pre Blur Threshold - Defines the required height difference between neighboring pixels in order to avoid being blurred. This would maintain shape-defining edges, while blurring finer features!
- Pre Blur Iteration - Number of iterations for the blur algorithm. The more the blurrier!
- Discontinuity Detection - Activates the discontinuity detection.
- Discontinuity Threshold - Determines the threshold to discover discontinuities along a surface during the process of generating surface normals based on the depth/original image. This helps to reduce artifacts due to the challenge of interpreting the depth image as geometry. When a discontinuity is detected, surface normals will be generated by alternative means. Using a normal texture will make this feature obsolete.
- Front Level - Offsets the front/white level of the depth image.
- Back Level - Offsets the back/black level of the depth image.
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Shading
This section offers all the basic shading functions except transparency, which has its own section below. Here you can determine the surface color, micro texture (glossiness) and translucency
- Surface Color - Set the base color for your entire geometry. It will act as a multiplier and therefore tint the entire image.
- Surface Color Texture - Determines a layer to be used as surface color texture.
- Surface Tint Amount - Controls the influence amount of the surface color texture.
- Glossiness Amount Texture - Determines a layer to be used as multiplier to the glossiness level. That might sound a little bit confusing for a moment, but since the glossiness amount is the leading parameter to determine the glossiness and doesn't require a texture, this layer is merely modifying the glossiness amount by means of multiplication.
- Glossiness - Determines the glossiness/roughness of the surface. It effects more than just the specular highlights, but all the aspects that would vary based on the surface's properties like reflections, refractions and caustic projections.
- Specular Color Texture - Determines a layer to be used as specular color. The replication of metal like reflections often suggests a tinting of highlights and other reflections. Therefore this texture will tint both types of reflections.
- Specular Tint Amount - Determines the amount of tinting the specular color texture could provide. Although it might come across as somewhat improvised, values above 1.0 will boost the highlights and reflections for additional special effects and more artificial alterations!
- Translucency Amount Texture - Determines a layer to be used as multiplier to the translucency amount.
- Translucency - Determines the amount of translucency, which represents the amount of light that gets distributed to the inside of an object's surface. To simplify this feature, translucency controls both the strength as well as the depth of the light's intrusion.
- Translucency Color Texture - Determines a layer to be used as sub-dermal color, so to say, or the tinting underneath the surface.
- Translucency Color - Determines a base color for the translucency and multiplies the above chosen translucency color texture.
- Shadow Softness - Optional global softness addition to the shadows in order to support a subtle but more cohesive relationship between translucency and shadows for the simulation of sub surface scattering
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Quality
This section provides parameters to individually control the quality of each major topics
- Override All - Sets a specific quality level for all quality parameters according to their specifications.
- Caustics Antialias - Controls type of antialiasing for caustics only.
- Refraction Antialias - Controls type of antialiasing for refractions. Whereby low is a super-sampling method as opposed to sharp and smooth, which are our proprietary concept of combatting aliasing.
- Environment Antialias - Controls type of antialiasing for environment. Whereby low is a super-sampling method as opposed to sharp and smooth, which are our proprietary concept of combatting aliasing.
- Oversampling Illumination - Determines samples taken for oversampling the illumination by light sources.
- This page was last modified 17:50, 8 August 2007.
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