Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=213968&Start=1&Sectionid=1&WhatsNew=Yes

I thought this wasn't supposed to be possible? Depth cue rendered? prolly a glitch as my computer reported lack of virtual memory at about the time this was rendered, but anyway... I kinda like the effect. I hope Poser5 WILL have depth. Oh and the link is to the finished picture in case anyone would like to see that ;o)

Depth Cue rendering is possible, although most don't like what it does. I think theres also a lack of understanding regarding the depth cue and maybe someone with some time should write an indepth tutorial on it. From what I understand of Posers depth cue feature is this; you can control the colour of the fog using the background colour tool, you then have fog which is disperssed evenly between the nearest obj and the furthest obj in a scene. The best way I have found to manipulate thsi effect is to take two cubes(primitives) and place them off camera, one furthest fwd in a scene and the other furthest back, you can then adjust the depth cuing that appears in the final render :) There are a few other tricks that cen be used also but likei said someone with a bit more time can maybe write a tut on this :)

The major problem that I have found with the Depth Queing is that if there are objects close to the camera's plane, or behind the camera's plane, the automatic scaling factors screw up and you get pretty poor results.

This can especially become a problem in animations if you are attempting to rotate the camera or move it through the scene.

I have recently emailed Curious' tech support and wish list with a report of this and a suggestion that the automatic scaling should be abandoned and the user is given the ability to define the scaling or blending factors explicitly on the render menu, or as dial parameters on the universe object, if there are any future releases planned ;-)

BTW: if you enable Depth Cueing, turn off all the lights, set the background colour to white and zero all ambience you can effectively render depth map images which are useful for Depth of Field effects and other post processing, so long as you can avoid the bugs.

williamsheil, you've just made my life much easier. I have been trying to figure out how to use Poser with Defocus Dei, a program by Blackfeet (http://www.blackfeet.com/plugins/us/defocus/index.htm) that does all sorts of interesting depth-of-field effects (depth of field, atmospheric perspective, saturation, hue, luminosity depending on depth). It requires a depth map, and I have been trying to get one by rendering in BMRT or Aqsis, generating a Zfile, and converting its proprietary format to something Defocus Dei can read. Your may is much easier! Thank you! Lynn Grant Castle Development Group

That should be "Your way is much easier!"

William<<< Thanx for the tipinfo, I think your right regarding more user control over the effect, maybe turn it into something like Lightwaves fog tool and allow not just the changes you were mentioning but also a graph feature where the falloff etc can be linear or spline controlled.

Thanks for the positive feedback. The depth queue tool for P4 had enormous potential, it's unfortunate that the bugs mean that it can't be used for depth renders in all circumstances. Perhaps I should have just requested a Depth Render option for Poser 5 [there, now I've said it...], that would have saved me a long bug report/analysis email. The notion of automatic scaling makes the whole thing impractical for animations anyway, since changes in the camera position and position of objects may change the level of effect during the course of the animation. Hopefully we will be seeing depth renders in the next release. Depth information needs to be generated during renders anyway, so it would seem to be a fairly straightforward option to provide.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=159023&Start=25&Artist=Spanki&ByArtist=Yes

I actually use depth cueing all the time for various effects, but it can be a pain to work with. The above link is to a mini-tut I posted, which itself contains a link to a previous mini-tut I did on depth cueing.

Good mini tut, I learnt a lot, and it's a beautiful render.

Good mini tut, I learnt a lot, and it's a beautiful render.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?Form.ShowMessage=774246

ernyoka1: The depth cueing looks like a fog effect to me. If that's what you're trying to achieve, check out this simple fog effect I did as a lark. Later, I learned that Nerd has a similar fog idea in one of his tutorials. of course the fog or simple fog effect has a lot to do with where you place the lights. Spanki: Good tutorial.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/gallery.ez?ByArtist=Yes&Artist=leather%2Dguy

2 Nerd fog effect renders.