When I do a zpass (as best as I know how…via PNG 16bit image files) I’ll import those into After Effects, but I’m getting a lot of noise in the areas with motion blur. EXRs are a bit of a mystery to me.
First here’s my node setup
Here’s the zpass in After Effects (200 samples) I’m using a levels/Exposure effect to control where the zpass is changing the luma channel.
Anyway to get better results other than increasing the sampling?
It may help Blender if you use a background, just for the Z pass. Instead of rendering an extreme distance, you put a plane in the background so Blender can determine the distance locally and render your images cleaner.
Well, that seemed to make a huge difference!
One more question - any idea why I’m not seeing the foreground objects as clearly? No matter how I move the exposure in AE, I can’t get them to pop like I could before (although before I included the plane, I was getting all that noise…) Here’s what I mean, see how I had so much more control over the Z depth of the foreground rocks:
Ah, found the answer (posting this for anyone else who is confused)
Simply put, I needed to enable and use the ‘mist’ pass for my zpass (not z) Then, in the Properties panel, you’ll see a new section called ‘mist pass’, make sure the start is low enough to see the foreground objects. You can also change the depth so that it limits how far the mist travels from the camera. My guess is you’d want these setting to mirror your camera clipping settings.
