SceneForge Concepts --> Cameras and Recording

Modified on Fri, May 10 at 3:58 PM

Cameras and Recording

Judah Mantell

Last Update 2 years ago

Cameras in SceneForge allow you to record video and take still images in various aspect ratios, framerates, and resolutions. Many of the properties of virtual cameras in SceneForge are based on that of a physical camera.

Camera Types

Tripod and Crane Cameras are mainly meant for pre-vis and shoot planning. For camera tracking, compositing, and timeline animation, the Free Camera should be used. Otherwise, you'll end up with some pretty undesired results!

Camera Properties

Cameras have five main properties that can be adjusted per camera, and the viewfinder has properties that apply to all cameras in the scene. It's important to note that these properties aren't intended to be fully physically accurate, rather be an easy way to adjust the way your focal plane will look.

Sensor Size	This is the replicated size of the virtual camera's sensor. In SceneForge it mainly affects the Focal Length scale, and has various options based on real camera sensors.
Focal Length	This represents the angle/field of view of the camera, represented in millimeters.
Aperture	In a physical camera, Aperture affects both the focus and the amount of light let into the sensor, however in SceneForge, aperture only affects the camera's focus. This is to make things simpler when framing shots. Think of this value as how much of the scene is in focus, starting at the set Focus Distance.
Focus Distance	This is the starting point of the focal plane. It can be set manually, or by right clicking in the Shoot Mode Viewfinder.
Exposure	This is the exposure compensation value of the camera, measured in EV units. It works on a scale of -5 to +5, with 0 being no exposure compensation.

The other set of camera properties can be found in Shoot Mode and are as follows:

Motion Blur	Here you can adjust the intensity of the camera's motion blur. 0 means no motion blur applied to the frame.
Sensor Noise	Here you can adjust the amount of noise in the cameras frame. See Image Noise on Wikipedia
Sensor Pixel Size	This adjusts the size of the sensor noise's pixels.
Vignette Strength	This adjusts the strength of a vignette around the image. 0 means no vignette. See Vignette at Adobe
Raindrops on Lens	This simulates the effect of raindrops falling down the camera's lens.

Recording

When pressing the record button in Shoot Mode, SceneForge will begin recording the camera's movement to either keyframes or clips on its linked timeline layer.

This is what gets played back on the timeline, and gets rendered out when exporting. Because of the high frequency that SceneForge records the motion, it is recommended to only use this when using the Camera Tracking functionality.

For more simple camera panning, trucking, dollying, etc, it is recommended to use transform keyframes.

See the Timeline page for more info.

Exporting Stills

To export still images, you have two options:

Simply clicking the white capture button, which snaps a 1080p image (and makes it available in Storyboard Mode)
Clicking the "Render View" button and manually selecting a resolution.

When capturing in the PNG format (either through the Render Menu or the capture button), SceneForge will convert the color space to better display HDR colors. That being said there might be some artifacting around bright areas.

This issue is not present when exporting to the EXR format via the Render Menu (Pro Only).

Exporting Video

To export video, you can either record 1080p footage in real-time (by checking "Realtime Video"), or by clicking the "Render View" button.

When exporting, SceneForge will use the Render Start and Render End values set to the right of the Timeline Panel. If both are set to 0 (default), SceneForge will render the entire timeline from start to finish unless it is ended prematurely.

The Render Menu

To open the Render Menu, click the "Render View" button in Shoot Mode. This menu has a number of options as described below:

On the left there is a preview of what is currently being exported.

Show Directory When Complete	This does exactly as described
Resolution	This allows you to set the resolution from 720p to 8K. Please note that higher resolutions are only for supported hardware and Pro Users only.
Framerate	You can set the framerate of exported video.
Encoder	Here you can set the encoder for video export. This affects the output video file type, size, and how other software interacts with it.
Video Bitrate	Here you can set the bitrate for the exported video. Higher bitrates are necessary for higher resolutions. For example ~6000 for FHD and ~60,000 for 4K.
Post Rendered Motion Blur	This will apply an offline-rendered motion blur to the video as it's being exported. This is more realistic than the realtime motion blur configured in the Shoot mode Settings, but prolongs the render process.

Depending on the platform, different encoders will be available.

The currently supported options are as follows:

H.264	Outputs an .MP4 file. The most commonly used codec currently.
HEVC	Outputs an .MP4 file using the H.265 codec. The newer version of H.264, but isn't as widely supported.

Learn more about bitrates here.

Learn more about encoding here.

At the bottom of the menu, you can close the menu, export a still frame in either PNG or EXR format (Pro users only), or begin the video render process.

The Video Render Process

As opposed to the realtime recording option in Shoot Mode, exporting via this menu uses an offline rendering process, meaning it ensures that the previous frame is 100% finished before moving onto the next one.

The time

this process takes depends on the options selected above.

For example, higher framerates and resolutions take longer to export for obvious reasons.

After clicking Export Timeline Video, SceneForge will go through every frame of the timeline, then Mux and Encode that to a video file. Closing SceneForge or turning off your computer will end this process.