Lens Workflows for Anamorphic Shots

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Lens Workflows for Anamorphic Shots

In most cases, anamorphic projects will be delivered with rendered imagery composited over the original footage, ie a two-pass workflow.

For some compositing apps, currently Nuke and Fusion, it is also possible to work with a no-pass workflow, where the SynthEyes Lens Workflow script isn’t run at all. Instead, the composition effort relies on overscan rendering within the compositing app. Not having to run the Lens Workflow simplifies the overall workflow, especially if multiple track and export cycles are required.

IMPORTANT: When rendering images in other apps for compositing with no-pass exports to Nuke and Fusion, those renders must use the same lens center as Nuke or Fusion. Other exports typically will not export the lens center, as it is always at the image center when the Lens Workflow is used. Manually setting the lens center in the other apps is generally difficult, as applications use various coordinate systems for the values (frequently undocumented). Unless you have verified that the lens center is exported to your apps, either use the Lens Workflow, or don’t solve for the lens center (leaving it centered).

IMPORTANT #2: Similarly, overscan rendering is usually required to generate all the pixels required to fill the redistorted image. This requires not only support in the rendering app (not always available), but in the images being saved from the renderer (typically EXR is required and used).

If the scene must be exported to multiple different apps, then it is probably best to run the Lens Workflow script, and export the same updated scene to each downstream app.

Tip: Anamorphic images can show up with irregular image sizes, where the width/height aspect ratio reduces to a “proper” fraction (by dividing each by their greatest common divisor) that is still quite large. As a result, the lens workflow script tries to exactly maintain that aspect ratio, sometimes resulting in unexpectedly large padded images. Use the “Maximum rounding error” control on the Advanced Lens Workflow script to mitigate that.

 

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