Is there a way to make Z-Depth Masks in P7? like in "Mood Master D|S Z-Depth FX Layers" over at DAZ
http://www.daz3d.com/i.x/shop/itemdetails/-/?item=5460&cat=421

Also does anyone know where i can find a plugin or some way to produce that grainy photo style in Photoshop to my renders? as i want renders that look too like photos and not polished magazine pics...

thankyou anyone...

photoshop comes with a 'film grain" filter. poser doesn't have a z-buffer system like carrara AFAIK, but it can generate a depth cue mask.

A good tip I learned for doing grain on pcitures in photoshop... rather than just slapping on the film grain filter, add an extra layer above your work. Fill it in with 50% grey and set the blending to 'hard light'. Now, go over to the channels tab. Pick each channel individually (R, G, and B, but not RGB), and use the filter 'add noise' there in differeing amounts. It adds a great level of reality to the image, and gives you finer control over which colours you want more niose generated for.

JonTheCelt

GREAT advice!! 

Thanks!!

Thanks Miss Nancy but how do you create a depth cue mask in P7????
and i shall be trying that method too jonthecelt,cheers.

if you open up the dystopia city blocks in poser you will find in the pose folder for them a z-depth thingy, which is a depth cue mask, see what is different with and without that applied and then you may find out how to do that which you ask.

alas i know not of these things.but if ye seeketh ye shall findeth.

(sorry went a bit dramatic there)

PoseWorks' GlowWorm thingy (available at DAZ) let's you generate a depth mask. I don't know if Poser can do it on it's own... if anybody's figured this out I'd love to hear about it!

shed, click the depth cue icon (3 balls) so that they appear to fade out. render (ground display disabled) and export image as tiff. in photoshop, the alpha channel will be the depth cue mask.

Quote - shed, click the depth cue icon (3 balls) so that they appear to fade out. render (ground display disabled) and export image as tiff. in photoshop, the alpha channel will be the depth cue mask.

I tried this, but I didn't get quite what I expected.  When enabling the depth cue I do see the object fading into the background, and that effect is preserved when I export it to TIF.  However, when I look at the alpha channel, all of the objects are pure white with the background as pure black.  There are no shades of gray to indicate relative depth.

Did I miss something, or was I expecting too much?

dana, that's exactly how it will look if the ground plane is displayed. the ground plane disables the depth mask export. try it with no ground plane, and boxes at z=10, z=0, and z=-10. this has been a feature of poser (mac version) since P4.

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

The ground plane is disabled.  That is, I have the ground prop turned off on Visible, RayTracing, Casts Shadows, etc.  I also have ground shadows disabled.   And I turned on the "3-ball icon" for depth cueing.  

And the TIFFs alpha plane is still black/white w/ no gray.  I'm getting the fade-out on screen, but no fade in the TIFF's alpha channel.

Is there some other way I should be disabling the ground prop?

FYI, I'm running Poser 7.01.109 on a PC, and I'm examing the TIFF with Photoshop CS/2.

in the mac version, there are several menus along the menu bar at top. one of said menus is "Display". Display/Guides/Ground Plane should have no check mark in front of it. if it still doesn't work, then there may be a bug in the windows version. report it to e-f.

There is no check in front of the Display->Guides->Ground Plane.  So, sounds like a bug in the windows version. :(

Thanks anyway!

oops! - it may only work in the poser 4 renderer. ISTR it worked in firefly, the last time I tried it, but firefly may disable the depth-cueing function. the poser 4 render is not very good, but one can render the scene as desired in firefly, then just use the depth mask from the p4 render in photoshop, as an additional mask to use with the alpha channel that firefly will generate.

Strange... using the simple scene of boxes, I got this to work using P4-renderer as you describe.  However, when I try a complex scene with multiple figures & props, it returns to being just a b/w mask with no grey scales.  All the guides are off, and the depth cue is on.  

I should say, however, that I did get one patch of grey at first, and that was in the figures eyes, but when I put on a different eye texture (a simpler one w/o shaders), that turned to white in the mask.

Any ideas?

it appears the depth-cue thing must have some bugs. for example, in your scene display (pose room), when you drag your mouse pointer over the depth-cue icon, what name or title appears to the left of the render tab? I've noticed I get rendering errors on occasion, but they disappear after restarting the machine and restarting poser. I believe it's due to poser over-writing some areas of RAM as it gradually uses up more and more.

Quote - it appears the depth-cue thing must have some bugs. for example, in your scene display (pose room), when you drag your mouse pointer over the depth-cue icon, what name or title appears to the left of the render tab?

The title of the file appears there.

Note, however, that when I press the icon, I do get the depth-cueing effect on screen.  It's just being exported to the TIFF, either from preview or from P4-render, at least not with the complex scene.

I thought the tiff would be the alpha.  I mean, it's not the tiff's apha channel you need, you need to use the render you see as the alpha.  I think.

I noticed that the depth cue is calculated based on the farthest object on the screen, or something like that.  I tried it in an animation once, and got horrible flashing as it was constantly reevaluating its farthest range.  Does that mean it becomes less accurate overall as the distance increases?  I'm guessing there are only 256 slices it can recognise along the z axis.

No, the alpha channel was the depth cue.  The other channels were the actual image, i.e. object brightness was affected by texture, lights, etc.

Now, if only I could get it to work beyond the simple cases.  Maybe this is just a wish-list for Poser 8.

well i used Glowworm and it produces fantastic results, im hoping that P8 has its own alpha maps or at least a DOF that does not take years, i have a life EF and i wish to use it on something other than waiting for DOF....lol
ohh add better lights and render engine whilst your at it...hehehehe