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Someone asked me about a great challenge here: is it possible to create a « video feedback » effect in Blender; like this one:

My scene setup:

  • camera A pointed on a human.
  • Behind the human, there is a screen; which « streams » what camera A captures.
  • So this would create a video feedback effect.
  • That whole scene would be captured by camera B on a larger shot; and this would be my final output.

My first approach was to check if there is a « camera output » node (for the screen material) to feed the screen material, but there isn’t.

I searched the web and found this:

But no real solution. Someone wrote a python script, but it has been done in 2015 for the Game Engine, so i’m not sure I could use it here : Render To Texture - Game Engine.

Another solution I see it to do it manually, but that is quite long/boring to do! I can't imagine rendering an animation manually like this...

  • screen texture: (none) >>> render cameraA to cameraA-001.jpeg
  • screen texture: cameraA-001.jpeg >>> render cameraA-002.jpeg
  • screen texture: cameraA-002.jpeg >>> render cameraA-003.jpeg
  • screen texture: cameraA-003.jpeg >>> render cameraA-004.jpeg
  • screen texture: cameraA-004.jpeg >>> render cameraA-005.jpeg
  • Finally, render the camera B view. I would have a loop of 5 « iterations » in the screen.

Back plane is a "screen", bottom and right planes are mirrors.

enter image description here

So, is there a way to script this or is there another way to achieve it ?

Thanks a lot !

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  • $\begingroup$ I was just thinking about that after Tom Scott said it wasn’t possible. My thought was to use compositing, but I’m not sure if compositing can reference a different point in time. I think it can, or at least it could probably pull up past rendered frames. $\endgroup$
    – TheLabCat
    Oct 15, 2021 at 7:36
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    $\begingroup$ But why wouldn't it be possible to script my "manual" solution ? $\endgroup$
    – gordie
    Oct 15, 2021 at 8:07
  • $\begingroup$ oh, I didn’t say that. Scripting was my first thought. I just like to avoid scripting cuz for me I feel I’m in the jerry rig phase: any slightest change in the API or purpose would bring it crashing down. $\endgroup$
    – TheLabCat
    Oct 15, 2021 at 8:10
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    $\begingroup$ Sorry, I had misread your first comment :) Ok ! I'll try to find out... $\endgroup$
    – gordie
    Oct 15, 2021 at 8:18
  • $\begingroup$ How about this blender.stackexchange.com/a/213637/29586 ? $\endgroup$ Dec 25, 2022 at 8:54

1 Answer 1

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You mentioned doing it with multiple renders. This can be optimized beyond what you imagined (but still requires 3 images, in 2 separate renders, for every frame).

enter image description here

The first thing we'll do is set up an AOV. For our video monitor, we'll output UV in this AOV. For everything else, we'll output RGB 0,0,1.0. This will let us distinguish between the screen and everything else in the render, and will get proper occlusion of the screen. Let's render both this AOV and our actual rendered output (minus the screen).

Now let's set up our screen material in a little more detail. We haven't worried about it yet, because we'll be replacing it:

enter image description here

Make sure you understand what we're doing here. We're using the screen's UV to look up both renders. If and only if the AOV render is blue, we mix in the color from the render. This is our first pass. Now let's make a node group out of it:

enter image description here

I've added a few details to this node group, so it needs some explanation. I've given it a vector output, which is the RG lookup from our AOV render. I've created a "stop" input, which mixes us back into our original color if it's set. And I've created a "stop" output, which is set if either our stop input is true or if our AOV lookup reads Blue. Notice that the inputs and outputs and now perfectly parallel. That let's us do this:

enter image description here

By chaining the node groups together, we can dive as deep into the render as we want, without making any new renders. Here, I'm doing 4 iterations. Unfortunately, there is no right number of iterations, and you can't do infinite iterations, but at least it is very simple here to add more iterations as needed.

Note that there isn't any kind of antialising going on. I'd recommend that you render your AOV at a higher resolution than your final render to compensate. This should be easy enough because you can render your AOV in Eevee, with 1 sample, so the AOV is a very fast render.

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  • $\begingroup$ This answer is amazing. I’ll take some time to try this ! $\endgroup$
    – gordie
    Oct 15, 2021 at 18:01

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