{"id":276,"date":"2008-12-06T02:19:23","date_gmt":"2008-12-06T08:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mrbluesummers.com\/?page_id=276"},"modified":"2012-02-21T16:55:24","modified_gmt":"2012-02-21T16:55:24","slug":"depth-of-field-primer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mrbluesummers.com\/276\/3d-tutorials\/depth-of-field-primer","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to Depth of Field"},"content":{"rendered":"
Hello everyone!<\/p>\n
Today is a Friday. And on Friday I usually think about what I’m going to do for the Monday Movie that I promise to deliver in a few days. This week, however, I realized that Depth of Field is a topic that a) wouldn’t compress very well in YouTube, and b) deserves more than 10 minutes. Depth of field is one of the many things you can use in your renders to add realism, meaning, and style. Like a lot of other features of 3ds Max, depth of field (DOF) requires tact and care to make a convincing and elegant result.<\/p>\n
New: Take a look at my Depth of Field Monday Movie<\/a>!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong><\/p>\n The final render of the scene.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n If you’ve ever done a lot of cooking you can relate to this. Everything tastes great with butter, salt, and pepper. I could serve you a fried brick and it would taste awesome! What separates the good chefs from the great ones is knowing when and how much fat to use to keep everything in balance.<\/p>\n Let’s start with this image below.<\/p>\n Beginning image with no depth of field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Depth of Field Scene Download<\/a><\/p>\n You’ll notice that I didn’t use any depth of field at all. However, there are already a lot of visual clues that tip you off that these teapots aren’t huge. The scale of the materials (such as the wood on the floor) are reasonable for ordinary sized objects. The baseboards along the bottom of the wall in the background gives you another clue since those are rarely taller than a few inches. I’m not relying on depth of field to be<\/em> my scale queue, but instead to be a part of<\/em> the greater image.<\/p>\n Let’s add depth of field to this scene. The first thing to consider is what should be in focus. In most cases, it’ll depend on what’s most important. Below you’ll see two examples of renders with different focal points. In the left image, we’re focusing on the boy teapot and the heart, while in the right image we’re focusing on the girl teapot and what she sees.<\/a><\/p>\n
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Mental Ray<\/h1>\n
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