Forum: Vue

Subject: Depth of Field

Rokol opened this issue on May 04, 2005 ยท 17 posts

Rokol posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 1:27 PM

Attached Link: http://www.richardrosenman.com/dofpro.htm

Hey, you've got to see this new plug-in for creating depth of field using G buffer channels. Saw it at CGNetworks. Looks good! regards Rokol.

Collateral_Damage posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 2:05 PM

The examples look very realistic. Its very clever the way they have simulated how a traditional camera blur looks with the artifacts created by the aperture blades. At the price advertised it looks like decent value. I don't think the DoF camera blur in Vue is very realistic anyway. How easy would it be to use this with vue? Does vue generate an appropriate grayscale depth-map?

agiel posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 2:12 PM

Nice !

The native DoF blur from Vue can be very realistic if you have the patience for a long render.

I usually use the Z map back into photoshop, but it takes some tweaking with curves to get it right. This plugin is going to simplify that process a lot ! Check out his other plugins too... he seems to have an interesting collection.

Message edited on: 05/04/2005 14:18

agiel posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 2:26 PM

Attached Link: http://www.richardrosenman.com/dofpro_interactive2.htm

Even better... check his Interactive demos :)

agiel posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 2:27 PM

Attached Link: http://www.richardrosenman.com/dofpro_interactive1.htm

Demo for chess image.

DMM posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 2:32 PM

I wonder if this plugin would work for an animation, say in Premiere or something. It would save a lot of time in an animation for sure.

Rokol posted Wed, 04 May 2005 at 3:41 PM

No animation yet. Looks like they might do it in future. Love the way you can just click & it instantly changes DOF.

ChuckEvans posted Thu, 05 May 2005 at 9:07 AM

Interesting.

agiel posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:01 AM

I just had to get that plugin as I never was really satisfied with the way I got that effect to work in photoshop. So here is a small example to give you an idea of the options. First, this is the original scene, without any depth of field.

agiel posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:02 AM

Now this is Vue's depth of field (5%) rendered in Final mode in 10 mins.

With this amount of blur, Final is definitely not enough.

Message edited on: 05/06/2005 06:05

agiel posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:05 AM

Still Vue's Depth of Field, but in User mode this time with 20 rays minimum and 100 rays maximum, and a quality set to 100 %. The result is much better but still a big grainy with some weird patterns at the top of the cauldron. Render time was 4 h 29 mins.

agiel posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:10 AM

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/dof_tutorial.html

Here is my regular attempt at the Depth of Field effect in Phtoshop. I used the Z Depth map generated by Vue along with the image in Final mode, and followed the method descried at this link. The result is nice but the edges of objects is not blurred properly (due to the 'steps' in variation of depth on the Z Depth map - the transitions from one range of depth to the other is not smooth and it shows). Still some artifacts around the cauldron. Render time : - Vue Final mode : 10 Mins - Photoshop manual method : 5 mins

agiel posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:12 AM

Finally the results with the DoFPro plugin.

It took me a while to understand how it works a lot of trial and error, but after the first 45 mins you can save the settings and just apply the plugin as is.

There is no question in my mind - the results are much better.
I think I will keep it :)

Render time:

Message edited on: 05/06/2005 06:14

DMM posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:31 AM

Thanks for posting that Agiel, a very very useful series of images. If/when this plugin becomes animation-friendly it will become the perfect addon, saving hours or days of rendering, with better results at the end if it all. But I have to agree, even as it is currently at that price it's a steal :D I think I will get it also.

Rokol posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 6:43 AM

Got it too. My only quibble is with the preview window. If you are trying to blur a large image you only get to see a small section of the picture. Can't find a way to resize it! Like they way you can change the gamma & brightness values of the depth map to focus on what's wanted. It's also very fast. That last image is very good indeed Agiel!!

ChuckEvans posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 9:24 AM

Very useful info, Agiel! Thanks for taking the time.

agiel posted Fri, 06 May 2005 at 10:00 AM

Thanks for the comments about the picture. It was interesting to see if an old scene could be rendered again in a more recent version of Vue (the original was rendered in 2001). On a side note, you might be interested to know that the first version back in 2001 took about 20h with Vue 4 and a Pentium 4 1.3 GHz at a rather high quality settings. I rendered the same scene with much higher quality settings with Vue Infinite in just 4 h 29 mins (of course, now I have a P4 3.4 Ghz :)).