hey there,
Im making the camera go throuh a maze with objects placed along it, but I want to do it so that as i pass all the objects only the object nearest to the camera at a particular point in time is in focus and the rest of the objects along the corridor are out of focus. is this possible to do on blender??
Thanks, Rach
2.43 Camera has DOF and animatable focal planes. See the edit panels.
sorry Im a complete newbie and no idea how to do what you just said!!!
RBuckley,
If you have the most current official release, you have 2.42a. 2.43 has not yet been officially released, but has been released as candidate (RC1 and RC2). You can get the latest builds at:
http://www.graphicall.org/builds/index.php
Read about the candidate releases here:
http://www.blender.org/cms/Changes_since_2_42.771.0.html
I have never run into any problems having multiple versions of Blender running on the same pc.
Best of Luck!
The Defocus Node is what you’re looking for in 2.43rc2
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=85028
Get 2.43rc2 from here :
http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.43rc/
Mike
Not what you asked and you may not even want this, but if you set the Clip End value of the Camera down in F9 then the camera won’t even render those ‘out of focus’ objects.
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To clarify:
In Blender, everything is always in focus by default. What you really want to know is whether it’s possible to make most things out of focus except the closest object. In traditional photography and film, this is referred to as the Depth of Field - often shortened to DOF.
I don’t know much about the next release (2.43) but if Roger says it has DOF built-in then guess it has DOF built-in. So that may make things easier a “few weeks” from now.
Until then you’ll have to research DOF render nodes and stuff and see if you make sense of that.
You should also consider the possibility of using lighting to deliver a similar result. You could parent a lamp to the camera so that the area immediately in front of camera is always more brightly lit than the remainder of the scene. Use a soft spot lamp with no specular or shadow (probably) to soften the effect. Everything will still be in focus but some stuff will be less visible/obvious.
thankyou so much thats a big help, not sure Im clever enough for the whole DOF stuff, but the lamp thing sounds like a good idea. How do I actually get the lamp to move with the camera tho, tho whole parenting thing just confuses me!
Try with a simple Lamp of type “Lamp” - this might do everything you need and will be easier to handle than a directional lamp like a “Spot”. Then, just select (RMB) the lamp then select (RMB) the camera then press Ctrl-P (make parent). You should see a dotted line connecting them. You can then move the lamp to a convenient position near the camera and from there on the lamp will just follow the camera everywhere so you just animate the camera.
Set the Lamp parameters (energy, distance, colour etc) to deliver the desired result when rendered. Probably set distance quite small to begin with and increase till you get what you want.
The best way to work it out is just by messing with it and see what happens then as the questions build up - ask again (always search first).
The link in my sig to the PDF is a good introduction to most fundamentals in Blender and sets simple projects to complete for each lesson.
Another user just requested my help very nicely, so http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=87916 here is a sample blend file and its output. enjoy!
I am continually amazed by what I have forgotten that Blender can do. To do EXACTLY what you want, RBuckley:
- Render the maze without the object out to a movieclip Maze.
- In the VSE, use the boxblur http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual/Animating_Effects to blur the Maze strip.
- Add the Scene using the AlphaOver effect to the blurred Maze2 as a background. The Scene should show just the object in focus and nothing else (so that the nothing will have an Alpha of 0 and thus let the blurred background show through)
- Enable Do Sequence and click Anim.
This functionality, now being re-discovered by renewed interest in Jahshaka2, has been in Blender for years.
Roger, will this work if the ball is “inside” the maze walls and viewed from an angle such that it is usually partially hidden by the near wall? Or, will it only work if the ball is viewed from an angle such that it is always entirely visible?
If the first case is true, then you lost me big time with the instructions 
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One nice thing I used recently with the compositor: If you make an object and give it material with alpha=0 but no raytrans or ztrans it will effectively cut out any part of an object it passes over. It is like making a mask in 3d as part of your scene. This may help to ‘occlude’ a ball if it is behind a wall in another piece of footage 
[quote=Mike_S;804241]The Defocus Node is what you’re looking for in 2.43rc2
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=85028
Get 2.43rc2 from here :
http://download.blender.org/release/Blender2.43rc/
Sorry, Im really dense, which one do I click on when i click on this link cos there’s quite a few!!
Choose the one for your OS (win, mac, linux) and if win then the installer if you want it to install itself or (better) the zip and just unzip it to its own folder (better because the installer will want to set shortcuts and probably steal your defaults). If you choose zip then just double-click on the Blender icon in that folder.
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