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 (also available in DAZ and HiveWire3D flavours) 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.
