Thanks Connatic, hopefully it'll continue to build up. So I'll keep the ball rolling with a bit about...
Creating A Depth Map Using The Atmosphere 'Depth_Cue'
This is handy if you want to do postwork depth-of-field, postwork depth-fog, etc. But remember that both depth-of-field and depth-fog can actually be done directly in Poser. Boni's already added included some links for doing depth of field in Poser in an earlier post http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2888795&#msg4193643 . It's all down to personal preference.
- Here's a link to a bagginsbill post halfway through the "Turning a 3D object into a displacement map. Extreme "duuuh" content." thread - http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2821053#msg3760022 . That post has a link to an 2007 RDNA "Depth Map" thread ( http://forum.runtimedna.com/showthread.php?26700-Depth-Map ) which covers the basics of creating a greyscale depth map render of a scene in Poser. Look at the two previous posts on that thread as well at least. msg24_7's 5-step process (with bagginsbill's extra step) is this:
- turn of all lights
- activate "DepthCue_On" (Atmosphere material)
- set DepthCue_Color to white
- set DepthCue_Start and _End distance*
- disable glowing materials**
- render***
A couple of suggestions:
- I gave up using the focus distance control. I now always do a first pass with DepthCue_Start=0 and DepthCue_End=1000 (inches). Then open the resulting render in GIMP, find out what the darkest grey and lightest grey (ignoring white) in the image are (I found Color>Threshold ideal for checking this), and then a tiny bit of maths (divide by 256 and multiply by 1000) to put those values back into DepthCue_Start/End and re-render
** ambient, reflection, and alternate diffuse channels are the ones I've noticed that 'glow'. SnarleyGribbley's free SceneFixer script has a 'set all ambient to zero' option, but you'll have to manually check for the others. I started writing a script to do it all but never finished. Alternatively, try option 2 below.
*** if your main render uses SSS or IDL, turn that off for the depth map render - it's not necessary, and disabling it will speed up the render.
N.B. If you do start changing your materials make sure you save a backup copy of your original scene first. Or before starting the changes save it as "whateverScene-DEPTHMAP.pz3" to avoid overwriting your original - I learnt that the hard way!
- bagginsbill's post also mentions a method of creating a depth map of any Poser scene by simply applying a small node network to the atmosphere. That is detailed in the subsequent posts on that thread - you could just look at the screenshot of the network a few posts later ( http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2821053&#msg3760699 ), but I'd advise reading the posts in between.
(picture added just to highlight what this post's about - i.e. depth maps)
(this post's got far too many words in it! Sorry!)
The 3Dcheapskate* occasionally posts sensible stuff. Usually by accident. And it usually uses Poser 11, with units set to inches. Except when it's using Poser 6 or PP2014, or when its units are set to PNU or something else.
*soon only to be available in two flavours - DAZ and Renderosity
