They say ‘good things come in small packages’, and this is surely true
for WaveFilter - a ‘plug-in’ suite of image filters for LightWave 4.0 from
Unlimited Potential, Inc. The entire product comes shipped in a small plastic
jewel case, no bigger than a couple of floppies, yet there are some powerful
effects packed into this deceptively small floppy disk.Among standard features, like brightness & color correction, WaveFilter offers several effects that are just not possible with standard two-dimensional image processing programs on the PC (i.e.: PhotoShop), including Depth-Of-Field blur, and automatic isolation of rendered objects from background plates.
Using LightWave’s batch processing abilities, WaveFilter can automate tasks that previously had to be done manually in a paint program, including blue-screen & clip-mask creation. And, since LightWave allows you to apply WaveFilter up to four different times in one pass, a wide range of effects is quickly possible. Indeed, since the effects can be applied selectively to the background, objects, or full screen, it becomes possible to do many effects ‘in-camera’, eliminating the need for later passes through 2D image processing programs.
WaveFilter is shipped on a single floppy disk in a small plastic case just big enough to hold the floppy disk, registration card, and a Lilliputian manual. Installation is a simple as any other Windows program. Put disk in drive - run Setup - quit Setup - run LightWave. (All you supply is the path to your Content Directory.) Once installed, you’ll find four identical files in your Plugins\Layout directory called ‘wavefilter1.p’, ‘wavefilter2.p’, etc. They’re all the same files - the four copies just allow for different settings within LightWave.
One
of the first of a new wave of third party add-ons, WaveFilter uses LightWave
4.0’s new ‘plug-in’ technology to almost become part of LightWave. WaveFilter,
like the Pennello Lite plug-in bundled with LightWave 4.0, can be accessed
from the ‘Image Filter Plug-ins’ panel in the ‘Effects’ window.
Image Filter Plug-in’s, by design, are applied to the final rendered image. As mentioned above, the basic functions of WaveFilter include Brightness (overall and separate R, G, B values), Contrast, and Gamma correction. Other special effects include NTSC Limit, B&W, Negative, Flip Vertical or Flip Horizontal (but not both?!?), Luminance Key Prep (for keying objects), Key Filters (for creating black or white ‘holes’ in place of objects or color ranges in the image). Negative Alpha will invert the Alpha channel, while Range Alpha will generate a clip mask based on two RGB limits (useful for blue-screen work).
Enhance and Antialias are two complimentary features. As you would guess, Enhance acts to sharpen color transitions, while antialias seeks to eliminate eliminate the jaggy edges caused by sharp color transitions. As the ads claim, it is possible to save some time using WaveFilter’s antialias - though it should be noted that LightWave actually over-samples data when antialiasing, while WaveFilter applies a custom blur algorithm to the existing image. (So, if you eliminate all over-sampling, you’ll start to notice flickering and shimmering on detailed textures, regardless of how much WaveFilter tries to antialias it.) Some might argue that you could achieve the same effect by using the ‘Soft Filter’ button in LightWave 4.0 - this is not true, since Soft Filter is applied to the entire image, while WaveFilter’s antialias is only applied to high contrast transitions (similar to LightWave’s antialiasing....)
Blur is sort of like antialias on steroids. Like antialias, blur softens the image, however blur is not discriminating - it will soften the entire area chosen, not just edges. Just like ‘Soft Filter’, the result is a nice softening of the image. The benefit of blur is that the amount of softness can be adjusted as necessary.
All controls (except for antialias Threshold & Focal Point) conform to the LightWave standard 0-100% range, though these values can be exceeded (for sometimes interesting results). RGB values are input using the standard Windows color picker dialog.
While many of these image processing capabilities are duplicated in standard Windows paint packages, few offer batch processing like that found in LightWave. The power to process thousands of frames automatically is enough to make this product worthwhile. But, there are a couple of other benefits from using the LightWave plug-in structure that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Unlike a 2D image processing program, a plug-in has access to several other dimensions of data related to each pixel in the image. Beyond just color, it is possible to examine the Alpha channel and Z-buffer data for each pixel. Using Alpha channel data, it’s possible to automatically apply filters to the entire frame, just objects, or the background image alone. Z-Buffer data is information about how far a given pixel is from the camera. It’s possible to use this data to blur objects based upon their distance, thus effectively simulating Depth-Of-Field (with an amazing savings in time!)
It is the Depth-Of-Field (DOF) feature in this plug-in that I find so intriguing. LightWave has simulated DOF since version 3.0 by using a technique of re-rendering the image from a number of camera angles and compositing them. To work, DOF requires at least 9 separate images, and at that level there is a characteristic ‘grainy/posterized’ look on objects that get too ‘fuzzy’. Even at the highest level (17 passes), there can be noticeable artifacting on the fuzziest objects. The effects (at High antialiasing) are often quite stunning, but the increased time to render each frame makes this feature prohibitive for anything but stills or short animations.
WaveFilter takes a different approach, which - while not truly accurate - is pretty effective. Refer to the accompanying screen shots of the standard BENCHMARK test ‘dof.lws’. The picture on the left is the image rendered using the default settings, while the image on the right was done using WaveFilter’s DOF function.
Probably the most annoying limitation is that the settings are not saved as part of the scene file. This was apparently due to some confusion that got cleared up at the November NewTek Developer’s conference. The author of WaveFilter claims that a solution is ‘in the works’, and should be available by the time you read this. As an interim solution, there is a load and save option in the WaveFilter dialog box. It’s possible to save common configurations and load them whenever necessary. While you still have to set each Option panel manually, at least all the parameters can be saved off for late use. Unfortunately, since the settings have to be set for each scene loaded, this means you can’t use WaveFilter 1.0 with ScreamerNet. However, as mentioned above, these problems could be resolved by the time you read this.
The manual is kind of sparse too. To call the manual ‘Lilliputian’ was a complement - at 3.5" on a side, and 1/8" thick, I lost it at least twice while doing this review! (Well, maybe it’s more of a problem with clutter on my part....) Fortunately, most of the controls are fairly straightforward, and don’t need too much explanation. While I have to applaud Unlimited Potential for their conservative and ‘earth-friendly’ mini-package, something a little larger, like a CD-ROM jewel case, would stack a little better and allow for a slightly larger manual. However, these are the worst of the bugs I could find.
In all, WaveFilter seems a very stable filter utility that offers a number of cool, time-saving features. WaveFilter’s image processing features are a great addition to LightWave, providing batch correction features found in few programs on the PC platform. Unique effects like Depth-Of-Field blur are simply not reproducible in other programs, and can help cut rendering times dramatically.
