The DOs and DON'Ts of Filter Construction

I feel it my duty to put this string back on topic.....

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Crapadilla wrote: I was hoping the wiki would serve to inspire, and I'm glad to read that the articles are being appreciated (even though I may be stepping on a few stickers ermmm... neckties)! Originally I was a bit hesitant to set up an article clarifying the more 'obvious' pitfalls of filter-making (which we've all had to suffer through), simply because it might have appeared trivial to the more experienced authors. However, in the process of writing up entries I realized that many of the topics are not as trivial or obvious as I thought (and I even learned a thing or two). In my experience new authors quickly jump to creating filters without familiarizing themselves with some of the more obscure technicalities of FF, resulting in - let's face it - a flood of filters that fail to live up to their full potential. Hence it is my conviction that providing new authors with a somewhat smoother path through the harsh realities of 'RTFM n00b' will certainly make for a better filter library in the long run

I expanded on both the "The Art of Blending" and "Patterns, Gradients, Frames and Blur" sections, furnishing them with more examples.

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StevieJ wrote: How much are you charging for all this??? Wink Big grin

Don't mention it. That's probably just some old villain getting sporadic fits of altruism...

nioce

Yeah but I'm having a bad hair day

My disappearance was grossly exaggerated

I've added a new section to the article...

Inspired by Carl ermmm... I mean... Beliria!

Nice bit of gardening

it's nice work

An informative read... very nice!

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jffe wrote: So in the example with the Perlin Noise components, using a threshold with 2 Perlin Noise components set with detail/roughness at 100 ones is like only using 1 of them as far as the render time efficiency then ? As opposed to using a blending component that costs the time of 2 Perlin Noise components with high detail/roughness settings ?

Exactly! Though you have to add in whatever extra cost you might get from setting up the clipping..

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Kraellin wrote: what else would the computer draw but something that might be visible to the viewer?

----The threshold seperates what you see into high & low, so for each defined region (high or low) it only fetches the pixels needed from the source component(s). As opposed to using blend, where it takes 100% + 100% instead of 50% and 50%. That's how I'm understanding it at least. Oh, and the 100% that is "lost" to the viewer of the output, is all those pixels that got blended when you really wanted them overlapped. Using the threshold doesn't so much replace blend, as it often times is just a different or better solution to a blending problem is all. Hopefully some of that made sense ha-ha.

jffe

Ahh that new clipping tree works great.. this one rendered in less than a minute, twelve iterations

Added another little article...

ah good catch!

You're hired as proof-reader!

Clipping article updated. In the new Cheap Source Clipping method I look at Betis' Night filter and cut down rendering of the moon from over a half minute to six seconds.

Thank you Sphinx for the clipping article!!! I've always wondered about this, but I never consciously used it. Did you really speed up Betis' filter THAT much just by adding one threshold!?

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I want to try slowly to begin to learn how to do filters, well at least SIMPLE filter as I will not learn scripting or complex things as all of you experts can do.

Oh yesss ! I'm glad to read that ! I look forward for your first filter.

I started with a simple one, a frame. 2 months and a half later, I mean this week, I have created my first complex one with the arrows. I'm surprised myself. I'm sure you will also surprise us.

I know, I have already read that and you get my reply.

Thanks to all involved in this excellent resource. I only wish I had read it before I started the filter I am working on. Will definetly try to apply this information more fully with any new filters.

Hi!

First: sorry for my poor english.

Please, help me. I make a filter, but it has errors. Needed particle adapter, I added it, but the error is again. How can I fix it?

I attached an image.

I don't know what you have before the scale components....Set the (XY Anchors) on the scale components to default(size) as well as other components marked as "Free"....