#postfx

Clone the PostFX from Github

Get Gradle and run “gradle fatJar” in the postfx root directory to build the jar

Go into the new build directory and find the fat jar.

Edit its contents by renaming it with a zip extension first, and then delete all directories inside it except for “ch” and “META-INF”. Rename it to a jar file.

Copy the shader directory from the postfx root directory to the location of the fat jar (the jar and the shader folder should be siblings)

In your system (mine is Windows 7), search for the following two dll’s: nativewindow_awt.dll nativewindow_win32.dll Place these dll’s under the following directory structure: <Eclipse project root folder>/natives/windows-amd64/

New real-time video done! Please, watch this on YT in 1440p or, of course, watch the actual RAW aka EXE: http://zd3n.com/files/str_locus_alienus.zip - For EXE choose 1080p only with the same or better CPU than i7-6700K 4 GHz (22-25fps). In 720p (default) it runs even good on i3 processors. Software rendered, so you don’t need a GPU. :) Finally Raiden’s song got the visuals and thanks to 2Ge for inspiring footage which pulled the trigger to make another prod. Enjoy…

We have had a lot of thoughts on different graphics enhancements for Basement last times. And a few days ago, i've made one. It's like fog of war post effect, that hides out what is happening outside of explored areas. Here is how it looks in current build. 

Okay, so we're again back in the photography world, and I want to keep going. There's still so much photography work waiting for me in the back-burner, but I feel this is a lesson I should share, too. As you can see above this post's cover picture isn't anything to talk at home about; it's just plain boring. However, for me this building is nothing but boring: it's the building that's provided me a shelter in which to comfortably study and work time, and time again. And back in September (yes, September) I already knew I wanted to dedicate a special picture to it, so I decided one day I'd go early, park the car near the entrance (see the cars on the right?), and when the light got low enough, come out, keep my books in the boot and start taking pictures. How innocent of me.

I did manage to get some, in fact, but security wouldn't let me, after I got close to the entrance, claiming I was taking pictures from within the building's property (the small black patch of asphalt outside it). I'd taken a few, quite a few I'd say, and they weren't allowing me to keep shooting because I needed a "special permit" to take pictures in their property, or so the officer said (as a note: he also said taking pictures inside is entirely prohibited because of IP issues with the building's architects). Fine; I got the permit, and went down again to shoot even more pictures, but somehow I left feeling the "good pictures" where from my first shooting, not from my second.

Conversely, I also decided NOT to work on them after being finished; they needed some time, some experience; two things I wasn't willing to give since I had more important priorities at the time. Until now, of course. Finally I decided I "wanted to make mistakes" with these pictures, and so I did.

This is our first winner for the evening. And believe it or not (easy to believe: the big streetlight's shot of light is burned in the black ground) that's an image straight out of the camera, no post-processing involved. It's almost flawless: you'd want the light on the ground not to be burned down, and the library's glowing light to be well-measured, too. Easy: I had a much lower-stop HDR shot in my Lightroom library, too. I merged both, did some "artwork", and this was the result:

Yeah... no wonder none of my friends actually liked it on Facebook. I just went too far: I loved the detail HDR brought to the building, and the sky's colors were a lot more intense, plus, the yellow haze from the streetlights was correctly reflected in the ground; I mean, that's almost as real as it "could" get. But I went too far. Despite that, I just knew the angle and the composition were "killer", so I put it up on Facebook anyway.

What follows though, is strictly between you and me.

Next up! After that killer shot, my number two shot reflected the main library's beautiful entrance, showcasing the beautiful lighting inside and the particular entrance's architectural style. I had many compositions at hand, all with multiple eVs to grant me all the post-processing freedom I could possibly need, and as I found out, all of my first-shooting's were downright unusable. This is the first picture you're seeing of my second shooting, and while the angles on my first were good, too, the streetlights posed a threat I didn't want to deal with in Photoshop, to put simply (they were taken much later in the evening). Plus, I had a very strange sky filled with noise in my best frame and my lens wasn't apparently clean enough, so I deemed those shots unrecoverable if I had something better, and I decided then that I had from my second field-day. Here's the test HDR "build" I made to make that decision.

I agree with you, it's beautiful, but if I could, I wanted to avoid myself all that Photoshop work (yes, I know it involves masking and erasing with multiple opacities to soften all of that stuff... but I just didn't want to go there). You can decide later if my final picture is in fact better or not than this one; but that's (in part) what this blog is all about: giving myself room to make mistakes and express them.

With my path chosen, I began work on that virgin shot I just showed you, and here is its first post-FX iteration:

Having arrived here, I'd already decided this was NOT a winner. I didn't like how the (faked) sunset wrapped the building, and I wanted something better. With a little more work from the start perhaps, it might've been passable: after all, having made that previous (first) mistake, I knew I had to shoot for "realistic", not "color-candyland". But I decided to take my mistake even further, since the picture still didn't provide enough of a "sunsetty" feel. So I took another pass and post-processed it again. Here's the (eye-hurting) result.

Not what any human being would consider a pretty picture, right? I agree with you.

Since I didn't entirely like the frame's composition (I liked parts of it, like the fact it reflected the back of the entrance and the red arch behind, like the dusty HDR shot I showed you before), I moved on to another one, this one.

You can already tell it was a no-no, right? Oh, my....

Well, what I liked about this is that it reflected more of the entrance, of its character, and so it became my center of attention. First round?

The whole post-processing was more integrated with the picture, delivering better tones and colours. However, it was still a bit far on the candyland area: too much detail derived from the HDR process. And I didn't like it. Small adjustments didn't do it for me, either.

It was decent, ok? Maybe you disagree, but I think it was decent.

Still, that's not what I wanted to portray of that building at all. It just wasn't, no way. So I had to look further, and my next try turned out to be the winner.

But something had to change, because I was doing something wrong. I was still post-processing far too much, and I somehow had to keep the colors inline. My last attempt had proven to be acceptable, but had nothing of the beautiful and calmy feel that building gives me, and again, I wanted it to be a sunset, from the start. So we had work to do.

But boy, did it work out this time.

To achieve the sunset effect, I did not rely in any kind of filter, just common sense: I obtained an HDR image, and then set the highlights split tone to the appropriate color; only a few minor corrections were required, and the effect seems natural enough. The end-result is colourful, not the over-the-top variety of colors that makes you kill yourself, but in a beautiful kind of way instead. Four of my friends liked it on Facebook (five when I used it as my cover picture) and it has provided me with my second-highest rated picture in 500px. I still don't think it's without its flaws: namely, it would've looked much better without that vignetting, but somewhere in my post-FX chain I agreed to it and I couldn't take it back once the end-result was obvious.

Lessons? I need to compare more often my pictures to the originals throughout the HDR stage (if any) and I need to keep the colors balanced, because this is my HDR style, not the over-the-top one. I have worse HDR-derived pictures (more painting-like) with three-to-four times more "likes", and I'm starting to really grasp how "less is more" in photography.

I mean, HDR is necessary, at least it feels to me in landscapes, but it has to be subtle, only filling in those lights you'd miss if we weren't talking HDR. Does this really feel HDR to you? No, after all you've seen. No. But it is.

With this post I want to explain the route I'm intending to follow after this lesson. Although, of course, I can imagine there might be a question lingering in your mind: "are you ready to finally fulfill what you once showed us?"