Depth of field and alpha hair

[Anicha Heartsong]

Alpha hair tends to 'glitch' against a light background - the hair and the background become all messed up. It's bearable under normal conditions. But when I turn on Depth of Field in order to take a portrait shot, the glitching becomes greatly magnified to the point of ruining the photo. While it might be possible to blur it out in a photo editing app, I feel it would be better to take a cleaner shot to start with.

So, does anyone have any tips for how to mitigate this issue? (Turning off DoF works, but I'd like to be able to use it if at all possible).

I'm no expert in using DoF, currently experimenting having read an article in the latest edition of Focus magazine (an in-world SL publication). My settings are taken from recommendations in the article (the rest are default) and I'm using Firestorm:

View angle: 0.783

FOV: 22.9

FOC: 50

CoC (circle of confusion): 29.0

f-number 5.6

I hope you can see the glitching effect on the attached photo. Let me know if not and I'll set up one that's more 'extreme'.

Any solutions?

[Anicha Heartsong]

This may show the issue more clearly:

 

[Jenna Huntsman]

This is likely an issue with forward vs deferred rendering, as alpha blending is done in a forward renderer, however pretty much all other effects happen in the deferred renderer. (This is also why objects that use alpha blending are often lit incorrectly, as the scene lighting happens in the deferred renderer).

Alpha blending is a real PITA in many ways, so if the hair is mod-enabled, you can swap it to alpha-masking which will fix the issue (hint: play around with the mask cutoff settings until it looks good, most hairs can look good in alpha-masking but require tweaking).

For reference, as well - if you want to learn a bit more about DoF, get some recommended DoF settings, how to calculate your own DoF settings, take a look at my wiki page:

https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Jenna_Huntsman#Lens_Settings

[Anicha Heartsong]

Thanks Jenna - I have hundreds of hair options in my inventory, possibly thousands, and I doubt a single one of them is mod enabled. The ones I want to wear for the photo shoots certainly aren't. It's a shame makers have to cripple their own products and make them much less useful though I do understand their need to protect their IP.

I'll take a look at your DoF info, thanks for the link.

[Jenna Huntsman]

4 minutes ago, Anicha Heartsong said:

need to protect their IP.

Mod perms don't do anything to prevent stolen content, this is purely misinformation that gets perpetuated as an excuse to not allow users control of the content they buy.

As above, it also prevents users from fixing issues with content as-sold, which is a particularly a bad issue as brands come and go very frequently on SL, so you cannot rely on a creator being around (or, for that matter, caring) to fix an issue with their content. Mod perms also allow users to upgrade content, for example, the hair that I currently wear is sold as a product that uses alpha-blending, and does not use material maps. My modifications have converted it to use alpha-masking, and to make proper use of material maps, so the hair responds to lighting in a faux-real way.

[Anicha Heartsong]

 

 

Jenna - could you tell me the brand of hair / name of the designer? I'm always looking for more and better hair, and having stuff that is mod enabled works better in so many ways.

[Jenna Huntsman]

9 minutes ago, Anicha Heartsong said:

Jenna - could you tell me the brand of hair / name of the designer? I'm always looking for more and better hair, and having stuff that is mod enabled works better in so many ways.

The particular hair mentioned above is from No_Match, but to shout out some other designers that ship (most of, be sure to check their listing) their hairs as mod enabled:

• Monso (they get bonus points as a lot of their hair ships using alpha-masking by default)
• Yomi (not all stuff from them is mod, so be sure to check their listing)