Depth of Field Shortcut

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
1

Here’s a modification of the “circling camera” DOF technique that I use for stills. Instead of going to the trouble of making a circle, training the camera to the path, setting path length, fooling around with ipo curves, etc., do this:

  1. You still need to target your camera to an empty.
  2. Make sure you’re at Frame 1 (and is you’re doing a still, you probably are)
  3. Hit I-key and set a Loc key.
  4. Go to Frame 2 (Right arrow key)
  5. Move your camera a tiny bit, so you can just see the move in your camera preview pane.
  6. Hit I-key and set another Loc key.
  7. Go back to frame 1 (Left arrow key)
  8. Render away!

I’ve found that you can get a really nice DOF effect using OSA, mlbur 11, with a setting of around 1.5-2 below the mblur button.

BTW, your area of greatest focus will be the location of the target empty. The more you move the camera, the more blurry things will become away from the target.

Alternately, you could choose not to move the camera, but to move the target. This would place your focus at it’s highest point immediately in front of the camera, getting blurrier the farther away you go.

2

Thanks for sharing. I will give it a try.

BgDM

3

Hey, that rocks! Before, I didn’t know that stuff about tracking. Now I’m getting a little too interested.

Anyway, I’d show you my result, but I have no website. It rocks, though!

4

thats pretty cool, i used to use the circling camra method untill i found the zblur plugin :stuck_out_tongue:

its a shorter shortcut even:

  1. download zblur plugin
  2. read short README
  3. load zblur plugin and put in desired settings
  4. render for perfecto dof =D

-chris

5

Thanks. I tried ZBlur. The optical purist in me likes the aperture simulation aspect of the rotating camera bit. Then again, what’s the optical purist in me doing with a scanline renderer? Hmmm.