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Path Tracing Quake in Blender

matthewearl.github.io

11–20 of 41 posts

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#11
I did something similar here: https://blog.habets.se/2015/03/Raytracing-Quake-demos.html [2015]

The author's write-up is better, and his target (Blender) enables some things mine (POV-Ray) doesn't.

I also really like the idea to use emissive textures. I just used point light sources.

I'm still rendering, and you can join if you want: https://qpov.retrofitta.se/

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#12

The motion blur is quite good here. Here is some light reading/watching on the subject. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/rend... https://youtu.be/VXIrSTMgJ9s In my estimation of things: motion blur is only beneficial to try to work around sample and hold displays. If there were fully continuous (1000 Hz is close enough) or sub 1 ms strobed displays then motion blur would add nothing.

I find the motion blur distracting :(

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#14
post #9

any effort to exemplify the characteristics or dynamics of path tracing is rendered immediately pointless by the gameplays insufferably sadistic nineties era bunny-hop autism as it makes a visible account of the gameplay all but impossible to follow. Path tracing a nauseating speed run holds almost zero value.

Quake demos can be "recammed", though. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzcevsd5SGE.

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#15

The motion blur is quite good here. Here is some light reading/watching on the subject. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/rend... https://youtu.be/VXIrSTMgJ9s In my estimation of things: motion blur is only beneficial to try to work around sample and hold displays. If there were fully continuous (1000 Hz is close enough) or sub 1 ms strobed displays then motion blur would add nothing.

Counter point: Motion blur is a simple form of low-pass filtering (in the time direction). You need some kind of filtering to prevent shutter artifacts (think video of a spinning wheel), and that stays true even at a million fps.

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#16
post #12

The motion blur is quite good here. Here is some light reading/watching on the subject. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/rend... https://youtu.be/VXIrSTMgJ9s In my estimation of things: motion blur is only beneficial to try to work around sample and hold displays. If there were fully continuous (1000 Hz is close enough) or sub 1 ms strobed displays then motion blur would add nothing.

I find the motion blur distracting :(

If you notice it, it’s not done correctly (which in games unfortunately seems to be always; presumably because it’s faked with a blur in post-processing). Few people complain about motion blur in movies, where cameras produce it through physics alone. It’s artificially added to CGI scenes so that they don’t stand out and distract the viewer.

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#17
post #15

The motion blur is quite good here. Here is some light reading/watching on the subject. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/cycles/rend... https://youtu.be/VXIrSTMgJ9s In my estimation of things: motion blur is only beneficial to try to work around sample and hold displays. If there were fully continuous (1000 Hz is close enough) or sub 1 ms strobed displays then motion blur would add nothing.

Counter point: Motion blur is a simple form of low-pass filtering (in the time direction). You need some kind of filtering to prevent shutter artifacts (think video of a spinning wheel), and that stays true even at a million fps.

I don't think this is how it works. We have a discrete number of rods and cones which work as a well behaved spatial sampler. Human visual system temporal sampling is smeared stochastically across the rods and cones rather than being clocked. If you truly displayed 1 million fps and there were no shutter artifacts (as there are none in any fixed-pixel displays that we are currently looking at), then the motion would be life-like. The human visual system doesn't take a temporally clocked set of frames then apply a low-pass filter to it and doing it as an approximation of actual perceived motion blur would look off (as many gamers lament).

Blurbusters has a fair amount of literature on this topic.

https://blurbusters.com/blur-busters-law-amazing-journey-to-...

Re: Path Tracing Quake in Blender

#18
Love this. There are high-res textures for Quake which would have made this look even better. The Quake Revitalization Project[0] has created new textures "without changing the mood, theme, or atmosphere", and I believe they're packaged by default with projects like nQuake.

[0]: http://qrp.quakeone.com/retexture/

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