Can anybody point me in the direction of a depth of field tutorial? I've seen some great images that use it, and I really want to learn how to do it. Any help would really be appreciated. Thanks!

I believe there's some on www.brycetech.com they have everything else! Don't know why they wouldn't have this! Jared

What I usually do is make a mask of the main point of view objects then do a controlled gaussian blue in photoshop, that way you can control the amount of blurring until you get something that looks good. also, making in layers for larger scenes so you can make use of variying degrees of blur. Ken

Why is that gun by the phone? You been getting prank calls again Ken? ROFL!!!!!!! Nice image.

Just waiting for the next telemarketer call..... Thanks Clay Ken

Oy, gonna shoot the receiver hook? Kinda reminds me of the DOJ computer agents who are now allowed to carry firearms. I guess when there's an intruder, they need to shoot the monitor quickly. ROFLOL.

You can give an object a fuzzy factor without changing render time too much by using the pull down arrow in the materials lab as indicated. Notice that the object in the rear looks out of focus. There's not much in the way of creating a vanishing field, but you can fake it pretty well by placing the objects farther away in the fuzzy mode.

Oh, you can also play with distance blur in the above controls. Hope this helps.

Actually the distance blur controls only the blurring of textures mapped onto the surface, to avoid moire effects of high-frequency textures receding into the distance. It doesn't actually do a depth-of-field blur on the image. Probably the best-results method to do depth-of-field is to use Ken's method: a good starting point for your mask is to render a "distance mask" of your image in Bryce (from the render options popup, next to the render buttons), and use the Photoshop curves to re-map it to blur only the distances you want and use it as a selection mask. -flick

Flick, I kind of understand what your saying, but is there a tutorial that kind of...walks me through the process? To tell the truth, I'm not that familiar with Photoshop. Most of the stuff that I do doesn't have a lot of post work in it. Thanks tho'!

The best method is by usind Distance render on the render options pulldown, this gives a greyscale image of your scene ranging from black (nearest) to white (furthest), you simply create and export one of these renders as well as your standard perspective render, then open them both in your image editer (photoshop in my case). In your layers pallete, select channels and using the arrow on the right, create a new channel - this creates a blank alpha channel to which you copy and paste your distance render. Then using Load Selection, select the alpha channel and flick back to your layers tab. now you should have the familier 'selected' line around various items in your scene. reverse this selection by selecting inverse. Duplicate the layer at this point and apply a gaussian blur to the new layer, hopefully, this will blur the background of the scene mostly, chances are that it might blur the foreground to some extent also, so.... undo that! - and tweak the contrast so that the blacks are very black and your infinately far items are as white as possible (levels is a better method if you are familier with it!). Now, re-select that alpha channel and re-apply the blur... may have to repeat until you are satisfied with the results! - sorry if this sounds complicated! - It really isnt, just need to experiment. Also, it is worth doing as someone else said, and create a mask render of the key object you want sharpest also, that way you can select this part from your untouched render and paste it into the top layer! I believe the Bryce manual does explain this to some extent!!

PS: Blur More applied several times does a more convincing job than Gaussian for real out of focus fx!