Having some trouble animating Dof for an animation Im working on.
In the .blend I have a node setup to make the Dof, is there any way of animating the values to change the focus from the background objects to the closer objects?
Either that or I could use the FocusOb in the camera settings, but I cant seem to get that to work, see the animated Empty in the .blend.
Any help would be great… Ive never been able to get this to work. :no:
DOF_Test.blend (166 KB)
Thanks for posting the file- that definitely helped!
The file above is accurate except you don’t have to use the empty (I think he wanted to leave your file intact AMAP-very cool of course)
Yeah so try using only the defocus node. Thats what it will work with.
Animate the camera DOFdistance by hovering the mouse over the camera tab under the (F9) editing menu (i for insert key frame- select: Focal Distance).
Change those parameters and it will automatically animate the DOF change under the Defocus node. Just keep in mind that defocus is processor intensive due to accuracy- so you can test a grainy version first then boost up if its to the way you like.
Plug the image to image and Z to Z (Be sure the “NoZbuffer” switch is OFF- you have a Z buffer)
To get more tight blur- Lower the F-stop
Hope that works for you…
(Oh wait… you’re using the empty to hold the Focus- well keep the empty :))
Thanks sick, thats exactly what I needed.
Its funny because I havent ever seen a working example of animated Dof here on BA, so at least this thread can be a reference for others.
And thanks R3Sili3nt for the additional info.
You can set keyframes by this same method across Blender.
However this list may not be complete, I think mainly in the case of materials:
Creating Channels
There are dozens of Material channels. For memory and processing efficiency, and to just help your workflow efficiency, when you first create an IPO for a material, you get to choose a set of commonly used materials channels.
There is a complete list in the IPO window for each item type, Object, Camera, Material etc. that you can see by selecting the type from the pop up at the bottom of the IPO window.
(Constraints and Sequencer don’t show any until you start working with them.)
A read on the IPO window is always a good idea:
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Manual/Animation/Basic/Tools/Ipo_Types
The Defocus node has a few problems that make it less popular than it might be for rack-focus sequences (that’s the term for animated DoF). I made one for my BLenses site (page 2 at the bottom) since it’s a fairly common effect in movies, but my method uses BLenses so the lens focal length can be accurately specified. Same basic approach, though.
chipmasque: Dude, your writeup made my eyes go all googly.
