At this year’s FMX in Stuttgart, ZEISS is showing an interesting extension of its CinCraft lens tech ecosystem that will allow VFX and compositing artists to apply an authentic lens look to content in a single step.
ZEISS' virtual lens tech is a promising breakthrough, getting its first public demo at FMX today in fact, that replicates the visual characteristics and animated behaviour of actual lenses on computer-generated content. Compared to traditional lens and defocus effects tools which follow a filter-based approach, this leverages physically-based lens performance to deliver real optics characteristics throughout each frame’s individual lens setting within a sequence. As you would expect from a CinCraft extension, it captures genuine lens characteristics such as sharpness, focus falloff, cat eye bokeh, chromatic aberration, distortion, and more from the original glass.
Why's that a big deal? Jonathan Demuth, Product Manager for the ZEISS CinCraft ecosystem explains.
“The lack of ‘ground truth’ data for lens look characteristics makes it hard for post-production professionals to talk and apply the same visual language that cinematographers and directors expect," he says. "ZEISS wants to close these gaps in communication by offering a reliable and predictable lens look solution for compositing artists which will improve the quality of photorealistic images."
You can see what this is capable of below.
Essentially, when fully developed the tool will let the vfx team select from a range of virtual lenses and apply those looks to the content in front of them. Digital lenses will be supplied per focal length and be like for like one real lens emulation per digital lens, potentially even matching the serial number of a real lens. The software will work on any camera format.
"We want to provide VFX artists with matching digital lenses ‘off the shelf’, instead of brute force replicating lens characteristics from scratch,” says Demuth.
The idea is that this is implemented as a one-click solution rather than a laboured UI, and Demuth uses the metaphor of DoPs choosing lenses from a shelf in a camera rental. And crucially the company is not just limiting it to ZEISS glass.
"Moreover, not being restricted to ZEISS lenses, the technology has the possibility to freely create any lens look, then top it off with additional enhancement add-ons to deliver stunning results," says Demuth.
The tech is currently in a closed beta with selected testers (including MPC Paris that was involved in the FMX demo). More info about as and when it moves into an open beta phase and from there to release can be tracked here.