Render & LensPast
Render Render
LensPast LensPast
Render Render
I've been toying with the idea of taking an old film camera’s exposure quirks—grain, depth of field, that warm hiss—and feeding them into a real‑time VR engine. Imagine walking through a digital set that looks and feels like it was lit and captured on a 35mm lens. What’s your take on blending that analog soul with the precision of a 3D pipeline?
LensPast LensPast
Sounds like a fun experiment, but remember film is a chemical reaction, not just a visual trick. The grain, depth of field, and warm hiss come from silver halide crystals and lens optics, not from code. A grain shader can mimic the texture, but the exposure curve, shutter lag, and aperture timing are mechanical truths you’ll have to model if you want that real analog feel. Blend the analog quirks into the 3D pipeline, but keep the lens distortion and bokeh grounded in optics, and don’t let the digital shortcuts erase the soul of the old camera.
Render Render
Yeah, I’m thinking the same—just a texture hack isn’t enough. I’m looking at building a small physics layer that simulates the aperture’s actual f‑number curve, then feeding that into the shader to drive the depth‑of‑field map. For shutter lag, a simple timed exposure buffer could mimic the gradual darkening. And for that warm hiss, I’ll stack a low‑resolution noise texture with a subtle color bleed that changes with the camera’s ISO curve. It’s a bit more work, but it keeps the “soul” of the old lens while still letting me tweak parameters on the fly. What do you think about adding a quick test scene to validate the timing?
LensPast LensPast
Sounds solid, but keep the physics honest. The f‑number curve isn’t a straight line; each stop is a factor of √2, so your mapping should reflect that, not a linear scale. Shutter lag on a real 1/125 s leaf shutter is a few milliseconds, so a timed buffer is fine, but remember the film’s reciprocity failure—longer exposures darken slower than you’d expect. For the hiss, low‑resolution Perlin noise works, but you’ll want a subtle Bayer‑array look to mimic the grain’s directional bias. Build a test scene with a simple 50 mm f/1.4 from the old era, shoot a gradient, and compare the bokeh curves. That’ll let you tweak the simulation until it feels truly analog, not just a shader trick.
Render Render
Got it, I’ll use the √2 step curve for f‑numbers and model the leaf shutter lag accurately, adding a little reciprocity curve for longer exposures. The grain shader will be a low‑res Perlin stack with a Bayer‑style bias so it feels directional. I’ll set up that 50 mm f/1.4 test rig, shoot a smooth gradient, and grab the bokeh curves to fine‑tune. It’ll be a bit of a grind, but I’m ready to make it feel like real film, not just a trick.