VirtualRig™Studio User manual 3.

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 VirtualRig™Studio 3.1

Welcome Introduction

- User interface

- Vectors vs blurrers
VirtualRig™ Studio is professional software for
realistic motion blur simulation in traditional - Blurring transparent images
photography and CGI. This document describes Control panels
all the application features and explains the
complete workflow using an example project. - Project settings

- HDRI images

- Spherical image mode

- HDRI spheres examples

- Overlay layer

- Jitter effect

- Render settings

- Render type

- Render queue

Tutorial

- Create new project

- Drawing first vectors

- Adding more vectors and rendering

- Final composition

FAQ

Keyboard shortcuts

Contacts

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 VirtualRig™Studio Introduction 3.1

User interface
The user interface of VirtualRig™ Studio was designed
to be as intuitive as possible. The main area of the
application window contains a workspace where you
define how the motion blur effect is applied to your
image. On the left side, there is a control panel where
you can change various project settings. The toolbar
in the top part of the window allows you to quickly
access the most important features from the main
menu.

Simply put, the motion blur effect is guided by vectors

which are drawn onto the source image. The position
and shape of each vector determines the shape of blur
in particular areas of the image. To draw a vector,
click icon in the toolbar, click into your image and
drag the vector to set its length. To move the vector or
change its shape, click and drag one of the vector’s
control points. If you click and drag elsewhere a selec-
tion rectangle will appear which helps you to change
the shape or location of multiple vectors at a time.

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 VirtualRig™Studio Introduction 3.1

Blurrer layout: Render

Vectors and blurrers

Start length: 123px End length: 0px

Vector

Start of a vector (displayed as a small circle) defines

location of the blur and the middle and end points
define its shape. The overall motion blur of a picture is
smoothly interpolated to match all vectors in their loca-
tions.

Start length: 123px End length: 100px

Blurrer

Even though a single vector is sufficient to blur a whole

image, typically more than one vector is needed to
non-uniformly blur different areas of the image. And
this is where the blurrer tool comes in - it allows you
to define a sequence of vectors, whose location and
shape precisely matches the shape of the blurrer. Use
the small circles at the start and the end of blurrer to
set the lengths of corresponding vectors. If you move
the mouse cursor over the circle, you can also type the
length with your keyboard. Start length: 15px End length: 200px

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 VirtualRig™Studio Introduction 3.1

Transparent images
VirtualRig™ Studio Pro supports blurring of TIFF
and PNG images with 8-bit alpha channel. This feature
is necessary if you need to blur different plans with Static picture VirtualRig™ Studio layout with blurrers
different speeds. In the example on the right the forest
background is blurred with a slower speed than
the front plan (the stones on the bridge and the tree
in particular). The two resulting layers were then
combined in Adobe Photoshop.

Please note that the render output format needs

to be set to TIFF or PNG in order to preserve the alpha
channel in the resulting image.

Transparent front plan blurred in lower speed Another render in higher speed

This scene is included in example projects.

Background combining different speeds of front plan Final composition

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Colors Margin approximation

Allows you to change colors of Margin approximation: Near the

vectors and blurrers. This setting border of the image there are not
might save your day when working enough pixels to generate the blur
on a picture with a background color effect from. This setting specifies

Project settings similar to default color settings. how the missing pixels are approxi-
mated. Try a different setting if you
experience some strange artifacts
around your image borders. Alterna-
tively, you can try using a negative
The project settings dialog controls several important speed coefficient or inverting all
Speed coefficient vectors (in menu Edit -> Invert) to
properties of your project which have a direct effect on suppress these artifacts.
how your picture is blurred. This setting virtually changes the
length of all vectors in the project,
without moving a single vector - see
the example below. The value 1.0
means that the length of vectors is Realtime preview
as displayed.
If checked, the current render is
displayed in the workspace instead
of the original image.

Speed coefficient effect

20 km/h 50 km/h 100 km/h

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Spherical image mode

Enables smooth blurring of 360°

horizontal panoramic pictures.
See next page for details.

HDRI
HDRI exposure value

VirtualRig™ Studio supports high-dynamic-range Controls the brightness of the HDRI

image in the workspace and during
images (HDRI) stored in Radiance 32-bit RGBE
the render to a traditional image
or OpenEXR formats. HDRI images preserve more
luminance information than traditional image formats
and they are often used to store high-resolution
panoramic images, although panorama and HDRI
are independent features. To preserve HDRI features
in your final render don’t forget to go to RENDER
SETTINGS panel and set the format to HDRI or EXR.
Note that this feature is only available in Pro version.

This scene is included in example projects.

HDRI exposure value: 2.0 HDRI exposure value: 9.0

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Spherical image mode

Enables smooth blurring of 360-de-

gree horizontal panoramic pictures.
Please find more information in the

Spherical image mode

following pages.

The spherical image mode simplifies blurring of 360-de-

gree horizontal panoramic images, because it ensures
that the right and left side of the blurred image can
be again smoothly joined in a panoramic sphere. Such
spheres are typically used for rendering of photorealistic
blurred reflections on CGI models of cars in third-party
3D rendering tools such as VRED - see example below.
If the spherical image mode is enabled, the workspace
will display mirrored copies of all vectors and blurrers
to help you see how the motion blur will be applied to
the image. Note that this feature is only available in Pro
version.

This scene is included in example projects.

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Photography and CGI by René Staud Photography.

HDRI spheres examples

This is an advanced example of an HDRI spherical
image blur to give photorealistic reflections to your
render.

Static backplate and the layout of blurrers. Blurred HDRI sphere saved into *.hdr

Static reflection without blurred HDRI Blurred HDRI sphere in reflections.

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Enabled Image size

If checked, the overlay layer will Displays information about overlay

be displayed. image resolution.

Overlay layer Source file Add to render

Path to the overlay image file. PNG If checked, the overlay image is also
and TIFF files are supported. included in the render output.
This panel enables you to display a static overlay layer
over your workspace. For example, you can use it to
display a picture of a car that might help you correctly Opacity
Scale to fit
align blur vectors with its direction.
Controls the transparency of the
If checked, the overlay image is overlay image.
scaled to fit the workspace image.

This scene is included in example projects.

Watch tutorial video: https://vimeo.com/122418094

Transparent layer + backplate Workspace with real-time preview and overlay layer enabled

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Enabled Lateral amplitude/frequency

If checked, the jitter effect Magnitude and frequency of rig

is included in the render. vibrations perpendicular to its
movement.

Jitter effect
Longitudinal amplitude/frequency
Noise level
Magnitude and frequency of rig
vibrations along its movement. Amount of artificial randomness
Back in the days of physical camera rigs, vibrations in rig vibrations.
of the rig could produce some strange artifacts
in the photos. You can emulate these imperfections
in the jitter effect panel. Random
Noise memory
For your convenience, use this button
Auto-correlation of the randomness to randomly generate the jitter effect
in rig vibrations. parameters instead of setting them
all manually.

This scene is included in example projects.

Watch tutorial video: https://vimeo.com/122418093

Without jitter effect With jitter effect

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Render settings Output file

Specifies the image file where

Format

Specified the output image format.

the next render will be saved. By In Trial and Lite versions, only JPEG
default, VirtualRig™ Studio saves is available. In Pro version, you can
rendered images to the VirtualRig also select TIFF, PNG, GIF, BMP, HDRI
renders sub-directory next to your and EXR formats. Note that for JPEG
This panel controls where the rendered images are project file. If the file name ends format you can additionally specify
stored, the quality of the render as well as its speed. with a three-digit number, the num- compression quality and for TIFF
ber is automatically incremented format, you can specify compression
after every render to ensure the files type.
have unique names.

Width / Height
Original image size
Desired width and height of the
Indicates the original resolution of output image.
the workspace image, which might
be helpful when deciding on your
render resolution.

Scaling

Select the algorithm used for image

Lock aspect ratio resizing. Bicubic offers the best
quality but is slowest, nearest neigh-
If checked the ratio between original bor has a lower quality but is fast.
width and height will be preserved
when changing width or height.

Render type
Noise level Specifies the type of output, see next
page for details.
Sometimes the motion blur effect
creates ugly periodic artifacts in the
rendered image. The noise level
setting adds a random noise to the
blur to avoid these artifacts. The
value is specified in pixels, the higher Show result after rendering
the value the more noise is added.
The noise can also serve your artistic The type of the render: Blur or Cur-
vature. Please see the next page for
details.

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Render type
VirtualRig™ Studio offers two types of render output:
motion blur and motion paths.

The first option generates the normal motion blur,

while the latter option only displays the curvature
and intensity of the blur. You will find motion paths
useful to fine-tune the motion blur in every area
Render type: Motion Blur
of the image in order to achieve exceptional quality
of your renders.

Render type: Motion Paths / Grid size 25x25 px Render type: Motion Paths / Grid size 50x50 px

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 VirtualRig™Studio Control panels 3.1

Render image Remove

Adds the current state of the project Removes a specific render from the
queue. The rendering process will
with all its settings to the render be aborted if it already started.
queue. The rendering will start

Render queue
immediately if the queue is empty.
Note that this button performs the
same action as button in toolbar.

Don’t feel like waiting 10 minutes for your high-resolu-

tion render? No problem, just add it to the queue and
continue your work. Multi-core rendering is now also
supported.

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 VirtualRig™Studio Tutorial 3.1

Create new project

In the following tutorial we explain how to blur

a real-world image, step by step.

The first step is to prepare the source image. If the

image contains a car, you will need to erase it from
the image or at least erase its border parts that would
interfere with the blur. To do that, you can use standard
tools in Adobe Photoshop or any other graphical
software. Additionally, you might export the clipped
car into a separate image and use it as overlay layer.
Of course, if your picture is a pure background with
no car, you can skip this step.

When your source image is ready open it in VirtualRig™

Studio using menu File > Open ... It is reasonable to
save your project to disk from time to time using menu
File > Save. Note that VirtualRig™ Studio projects are
saved in files with VRS file extension.

This scene is included in example projects.

Watch tutorial video: https://vimeo.com/122418092

© 2008-2017 VirtualRig™ Studio s.r.o. www.virtualrig-studio.com

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 VirtualRig™Studio Tutorial 3.1

Draw first vector

1

Now that the source image is ready and opened in

VirtualRig™ Studio, you can start drawing blur vectors.
In our sample scene we want the motion blur to follow
the curved road, so it is better to use the blurrer tool
[1] instead of many hand-drawn vectors (the difference
between vectors and blurrers is explained in Introduc-
tion). In drawing mode you can press and hold ALT
key to quickly switch to the select & move mode which
enables you to move the control points of the blurrer 2
- we need it to change the length of blur in the area [2
and 3]. In general, objects close to the camera move
faster than objects in the background, hence the start
length is much longer than the end length. If you hover
the mouse cursor over the blurrer you will see all the
information about it on the status bar [4], including cor-
responding vector lengths. Note that you can set these
length precisely by typing the number of pixels on your 3
keyboard.

Render type: Motion Blur Render type: Motion Paths

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 VirtualRig™Studio Tutorial 3.1

Adding more vectors

and Rendering 2

Keep adding more blurrers. The general rule is the

more blurrers (or vectors) the better the result. It is
important to shape the blurrers to follow the direction 3
of the assumed car movement and to set the length of
vectors appropriately. Drawing of vectors is very intui-
tive and it doesn’t take much time to get a good feeling
for it. 1

If you have an overlay image with the car, now it’s

a good time to include it to your project using the over-
4
lay layer [1] panel so that you can correctly align the
blurrers with the car.

With real-time render preview turned on [2] you can

instantly see the effect of each newly added blurrer. To
fine-tune the blur effect you might change the render 5
type [3] to motion path (see render settings panel for
details). When all the blurrers are in place, you might
also consider adding jitter effect [4]. If everything looks
good, it’s time to perform the final render. Set the de-
sired parameters in the render settings panel and click
Render [5]. It’s a good idea to add few more renders
with a different speed coefficient setting so that you’ll
have more images to choose from.

Render type: Motion Blur Render type: Motion Paths

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 VirtualRig™Studio Tutorial 3.1

Final composition

When the blurred background is ready, it’s time to do

the final composition and post-production of the image.
When talking about classical photography of cars you
will usually face two issues: wheels and reflections. From
our experience, the best and easiest way how to “spin”
the wheels of a stationary car is to use real pictures of
spinning wheels and superimpose them to the image of
the car using Adobe Photoshop or any other graphical
software. The results look absolutely realistic.

It is possible to use VirtualRig™ Studio to blur the re-

flections - essentially you need to use another graphical
software to extract the reflections, blur them as a sepa-
rate project in VirtualRig™ Studio and superimpose
them back to the car image. However, the details of
this procedure are beyond the scope of this tutorial. In
the case of 3D models of cars handling of reflections is
easier - you can create a 360-degree blurred panoramic
image and use it as a background for the render of your
3D car model - see spherical image mode for details.

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 VirtualRig™Studio FAQ 3.1

Can I upgrade an already purchased Lite version to a full Pro version?

Yes, you will only pay the difference between the Lite and Pro version. Please contact us to arrange for such an upgrade.

Floating licenses need internet connection, but what if I’m offline and still want to use VirtualRig™ Studio?
That’s no problem, you can be offline for up to one week and the application will continue working normally.
If you want to extend this period to two weeks while you’re still online, please go to Help > License manager and click Renew.

Can I use VirtualRig™ Studio without internet connection?

Yes, it’s possible, we can send you a license file by email that will enable you to start the application without internet connection.
Please contact us for details.

How can I transfer my copy of VirtualRig™ Studio to another computer?

First, you need to deactivate the application on the old computer. Just go to Help > License manager and click Deactivate. After that you
can activate the application on a new computer using your activation code. This applies to both fixed and floating licenses.

What is the difference between fixed and floating licenses?

With both fixed and floating licenses you can transfer your copy of VirtualRig™ Studio to another computer. However, with a fixed license
you can only do it once every few months while with a floating license you can do it any time.

I already bought VirtualRig™ Studio 2.3. How can I upgrade to version 3.0?
We sent all our customers an email with information about how to upgrade.
If you didn’t receive it, please contact us and we’ll look after you.

Do you offer student discounts?

We don’t offer any special discounts to students, in a hope that the Lite version is affordable to everyone.
However, contact us if you think different, we might make an exception.

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 VirtualRig™Studio FAQ 3.1

What are the hardware requirements of VirtualRig™ Studio?

VirtualRig™ Studio can be used on every computer running Windows XP Professional or Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), or any newer version
of these operating systems. However, in order to open and render large images, you will need at least 2 gigabytes of RAM installed
on your system. Also, more CPUs will make your render finish a lot faster.

Is it better to point the vector in the car’s direction or the opposite direction?
Actually, a physically ”correct” approach is to point the vectors in the opposite direction of the car’s movement. However, people
sometimes point the vectors in the direction of the car and also get appealing results. It really depends on what works better for you.
Note that you can easily swap the vector direction using the Invert tool in Edit menu.

How can I make car wheels look spinning?

Although it’s possible to blur wheels to make them look spin, it’s very difficult to do so in a photo-realistic fashion. That’s because the shape
of the rims produces very distinct artifacts in the photos that cannot be reproduced from static pictures. Also, some parts of the wheels such
as brakes don’t spin at all and therefore shouldn’t be blurred. In order to get finest results, we recommend to use separate photos
of spinning wheels and superimpose them to the static photos of cars.

Does VirtualRig™ Studio support non-standard ICC color profiles?

No, the application only supports sRGB ICC color profile. If you open a picture with a different color profile, the colors might look shifted.
Please convert your image to sRGB before opening it in VirtualRig™ Studio.

© 2008-2017 VirtualRig™ Studio s.r.o. www.virtualrig-studio.com

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 VirtualRig™Studio 3.1

Task MAC WIN ICON

Create new project ⌘ +N Ctrl + N

Open existing project ⌘ +O Ctrl + O

Save project ⌘ +S Ctrl + S

Keyboard Shortcuts Save as project Shift + ⌘ +S Ctrl + Shift + S

Close project ⌘ +W Ctrl + W

VirtualRig™ Studio provides keyboard shortcuts Quit VirtualRig™ Studio ⌘ +Q Ctrl + Q

to help you quickly perform tasks otherwise available

Undo ⌘ +Z Ctrl + Z
in the menu. Most of the keyboard shortcuts are also
displayed in the menu next to the command name Redo Shift + ⌘+Z Ctrl + Shift + Z
or when you hover the mouse over the corresponding
toolbar buttons. Select and move objects (press and hold Alt key when in drawing mode) V V

Select all A Ctrl + A

Draw new vector ⌘ +D D

Draw new blurrer C C

Zero vector’s length 0 0

Straighten vector 9 9

Move canvas view (press and hold Space) H H

Remove selected objects Backspace Backspace

Zoom in Z Z

Zoom out (press and hold Alt during zoom) Alt + Z Alt + Z

Zoom to full extent E E

Control panel P P

Change image I I

Render R R

Results viewer W W

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 VirtualRig™Studio Contact and support 3.1

If you have any questions, comments or feature requests,

do not hesitate to contact us at the following email

[email protected]

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