In Poser 5 the Firefly rendering engine has a setting for depth of field, which emulates the effect of a camera lens. With a wide lens aperture, some parts of a scene are in focus, some not, depending on how close they are to the distnce the lens is focused to. (Also depends on stuff like final image size, but if you want to know the details, go to the Photography forum.) My problem is figuring out how to set the focusing distance. It slows down rendering, so trial-end-error is hardly practical, though it may help get a feel for what the options can do. So far, the best method I can come up with is to put a dummy object, made invisible for the final render, at some point I want to be in focus, and then apply Pythagoras to the differences in (X,Y,Z) coordinates between the focus target and the camera. Am I missing something in Poser? Incidentally, for some renders I could probably get as good a result just by making a blurred version of the background image.

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/dof_p5.html

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12390&Form.ShowMessage=1768916&Reply=1784118#14

Hi there Antonia! You (or I) have great timing. I just put together a mini-tutorial/how-to on doing just what you want. You can scoot right over to the "Poser Python Scripting" forum and look for the "Restarted Wish List" thread. I explain my method at the very end of that discussion (as of 5/17/04.) I've also created a small .pdf file with a few screen captures with the same information in it. I'd be happy to send it your way if you want. Just send me a message here on Renderosity with your email address. Note that I'm using a Mac, but I believe the .pdf file will be readable on a PC without any problems. As a side note, there is a Python script which calculates the distance between the camera and whatever object/figure/prop/etc. is selected at the moment. This comes with Poser 5 for Mac, but if it doesn't come already loaded for the PC version, someone here can most certainly point you in the right direction. The method I came up with this weekend involves parenting a transparent plane parallel to the camera viewing plane. Moving that plane along its z-axis will tell you what the focal length is AND graphically show you where the focus plane will be. I'm trying to think up a way to show where the Near Focus and Far Focus planes can be displayed as well. Still, just having the Focal Plane visible is a tremendous help when setting up DOF renders. I hope this all helps! :) Lee

Thanks, folks. I think it's going to only be very approximate to attempt to show the limits of the depth of field, because it depends on final image size. Possibly the only way for computer art would be to base it on how much an out-of-focus point would bleed into an adjacent pixel. Phtotgraphy textbooks do give tables of depth-of-field for various combinations of focal length and aperture. Maybe we're looking at the problem from the wrong direction? Move the indicator plane to where you want the limits to be, note the figures, and set aperture and focal distance to suit that. This is, pretty well, what I'd do with a camera.

There are also 2 python scripts out there already which help set up DOF. I believe you can find them in the the Freestuff.

Dangit...apparently I lied...Ok. let me do some cheking and Ill see if I can post a link

LOL Well nuts. My pathetic memory really mangled this one.

Search the Free Stuff for Measure It by Bushi.
Its a measuring script so you can get the distance to the object from the cam. Once you have that the DOF is much easier to set up.

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/softgood.ez?ViewSoftgood=21792

The script from my web page was included in Poser 5 for MacOS X and Poser 5 SR4.1 for Windows. No need to spend $5 on a separate program.

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