How Do You Create this Depth-Of-Field Effect?
Fauvist
Posts: 2,152
Where the character in the foreground is in sharp focus, and the background is out of focus. In photography I think it's called shallow depth-of-field. How do you create the effect in your 3D scenes for a render?
Thanks!
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Comments
Flipmode has a good tutorial on this.
http://flipmode3d.com/depth-of-field-daz-studio/
You can also use filters in photoshop to achieve the same look.
With photoshop, I tend to blur the backdrop to get a depth of field look look in a scene and render over it.
You can also make two layers. copy the image to two layers, blur topmost and erase out the closeup figures or the item I want to be in focus. Sandwiched together the stuff I want to be in focus will be.
Thanks for the link to that Flipmode tutorial - it's great! I guess there's different ways to accomplish it. I'll see if I can find a filter in Photoshop to.
Do you know if the artists who do the promotional images for the DAZ content on the site are using DAZ Studio, or some high-end software?
They're usually good about putting what they used on the promo. If it says Daz Studio Genesis, chances are it's DS. They'll also have other watermarks for Reality, Octane, Poser, etc if those were used at all. The majority of the time you can probably assume it's DS.
This actually looks more like a volumetric fog effect is being used. There are UberVolume shaders included with Studio and a new volume camera product in the store.
I'm really inspired by some of the DAZ promotional images.
Looks like AOA's cameras here:
http://www.daz3d.com/atmospheric-effects-cameras-for-daz-studio
Using the smog preset to add colour to the haze
Rawn
Wow - great effects! I'll buy it and try it out. Thanks!
Thanks Fauvist. I hope you like the volume cameras.
To get the depth of field on any DS camera just select the camera in the scene list then look in the Parameters tab and turn on Depth of Field.
This option is not available on the default DS preview camera because it does not show in the scene list so is not selectable. You will need to add a new camera either from the "Create" menu at the top or by loading a camera preset like those with the atmosphere cameras.
You will need to set the focus distance also. If you select the camera but view from another camera, such as the preview camera, you can see some guides that will help you see what will be in focus.
If the out of focus areas appear grainy you can improve that by increasing both the X and Y pixel samples in the Advanced render settings tab. DOF is very fast in DS but does slow down as you increase the samples.
I hope that helps.
I use the DOF camera as an alpha channel (for use with lens blur) in photoshop ALL the time to create my DOF effects. Love these cameras!!
AoA -- if you could make the cameras "see" transparency maps, I'd love it even more!!
Good to hear :)
The Volume and Fog cameras both recognize transmaps. However, at low quality settings the Volume camera does show ghosting of any transmapped surfaces. This is just a side effect of how true volumes are sampled and approximated at faster, low quality settings. As the quality setting is increased the ghosting should disappear.
The Depth camera does not recognize transparent surfaces so, if a depth mask of transmapped surfaces is needed then the fog camera can substitute. Set the fog camera to white and turn off all the lights. That should generate a depth mask with proper transparency though the map will be reversed. You can simply invert the mask in Photoshop or Gimp for use with Lens Blur.
I hope that helps,
William
Good to hear :)
The Volume and Fog cameras both recognize transmaps. However, at low quality settings the Volume camera does show ghosting of any transmapped surfaces. This is just a side effect of how true volumes are sampled and approximated at faster, low quality settings. As the quality setting is increased the ghosting should disappear.
The Depth camera does not recognize transparent surfaces so, if a depth mask of transmapped surfaces is needed then the fog camera can substitute. Set the fog camera to white and turn off all the lights. That should generate a depth mask with proper transparency though the map will be reversed. You can simply invert the mask in Photoshop or Gimp for use with Lens Blur.
I hope that helps,
William
Brilliant!!! Never thought of this. You've just saved me a ton of time tweaking DOF maps with transparent .png masks. :D Thank you!