Scene Motion Blur: Basic Properties

Reference Rendering Menu Render Settings Effects Scene Motion Blur

Basic Properties

Samples

With SMB, intermediate images are calculated and overlapped in the corresponding frame with varying brightness. Choose the number of intermediate images for each frame using this drop-down list. The higher you set this value, the longer it takes to render.

Scene motion blur will also blur shadows, reflections and so on. Object motion blur, on the other hand, does not blur these.

If the motion is rapid, you may need to use a high setting to avoid a stroboscope effect (Figure 2).

Figure 2.

If you use scene motion blur in your scene, you may be able to reduce the amount of antialiasing. Stationary elements in the frame are antialiased perfectly, whereas moving elements are not antialiased. Usually, objects in motion do not require antialiasing — consider a 16-times motion blur where there are 16 intermediate frames; in this case, the missing antialiasing makes no visible difference. You can, of course, add antialiasing, although with a motion blur of 9-times or higher it is not necessary and does little other than increase the rendering time.

Strength [0..400%]

Defines the strength of the motion blur effect. The pictures in Figure 3 were rendered with 25-times SMB with Strength set to (from left to right) 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100%.

Figure 3.

Think carefully before using field rendering and scene motion blur together, since the field effect is often nullified. Not only that, but the quality of the automatic SMB antialiasing is better without fields and you’ll save render time.

Dithering [0..100%]

You can use this option to dither the scene motion blur. This helps to avoid stroboscope effects and in addition you can often use a lower SMB setting. However, the dithering may create slight noise. You can reduce the memory requirements for rendering by disabling dithering (set the value to 0%).

Antialiasing Restriction

If this option is enabled, CINEMA 4D automatically switches Antialiasing (Antialiasing page) from Best to Geometry if Samples is set to 9 Times or higher. This is because Geometry antialiasing is quicker to render and Best is rarely required with a high Samples value.

Camera Offset

CINEMA 4D creates an antialiasing effect by offsetting the camera slightly for each intermediate image. This causes slight blurring. If you want to switch off this effect — for example, if you’re creating a picture for print — disable this option.