I am not sure if I am just being dense, etc. but I am having trouble rendering with depth cue in P6. It seems to work sometimes, not work others, doesn't seem to stick when I set it, etc. I am jsut wondering if there a specific light requirement for it or something else. Currently, I am trying to do a render with one IBL light turned down fairly low but the depth cue doesn't kick in. I plan on adding other ligths but I am jsut trying to get an overall thing going on first but it keeps glitching out on me. Thanks

It's not related to the lights in your scene. The key thing it depends on is the distance between your camera and each object being rendered. You need to set the max and min distances in the atmosphere node so that they bracket the objects in your scene. Anything closer than the min distance won't get any depth cue effect, anything beyond the max distance will get the full effect. So you want most, if not all, of the objects in the scene to be between those two points.

Thanks, Ajax, I needed that also.

Thanks .. They totally hid that second button needing to be clicked to render the depth cue stuff. I finally got the dang thing to work since the old method of pushing the button on the frame jsut seems to be for a preview.

Me again ... I am kind of baffled by it still. I have been trying to do a fairly basic animation of a figure walking toward the camera and emerging from a fog. I figured depth cue would be a good way to do it but I am just entering numbers at random, trying to make it work the way I want to and nothing is happening. Well not right. Part of the problem is that I cannot figure out where the camera is placed to bracket with the range etc. But part of it is just I am not sure what is going on. I have been trying it with volumes, different settings etc but I cannot get a fade the way I want. Help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Is there a way to determine how many units away the figures start off? Do you have to have a mesh remaining a the start point for it to play off of? I know the old trick in P4 used to require a prop someplace else for the figure depth cue to play off of. Right now I am setting it fairly far back at about a start of 25 and an end of 150 (These were close to the defaults) but I get very little change unless I turn on volume. Then it is pure white. I have also tried it much closer but I am still not getting the look I want. Thansk for the assist.

25 to 50 what? If that's 25 PNU then your depth cue isn't starting until a very long way from the camera. What unit is your interface set to use? I come from a metric using country, so most of the time I have my interface set to metres and I can look at the scene and have a good idea of what measurements to put in because I know how far away a metre looks. It's done on distance from the camera, so you look at the translation settings on your camera and on your person and do a bit of trigonometry to work out how far apart they are I guess. You don't need any extra props to make it work. It just works on distance from the camera.

It is whatever the poser native unit it ... I have no clue what the settings but the default had it around there for some reason. And it do want it to start a good bit off in the distance. Basically the freak is walking toward the camera for 173 frames. Starts tiny and gets to a closeup. It is about two standard ground planes at least but I have no clue how big a PNU is and normally don't have any need for it. I just kinda eyeball it but that doesn't work in this case.

But I will try drastically reduced numbers when I get home.

Just found out I was in feet, I am still trying to adjust the things though.

Reviving an age-old thread because .. Well this may be old hat but I just found out you can use the Focus Distance Guide to measure where the start and stop in the depth cue should be.

And it makes such an interesting fog effect, especially if you plug a turbulence node into the Depth Cue colour and play a little with the settings :)

Thanks for the tip, TG.