I rendered this test image using "user" setings, but I can't figure out why the blurring of the object is so rough. What can I do to make the DOF blur smooth? I will post my settings below.

Here are the settings I used. How come the blurry edges on the foreground ball are not smooth? Do I need to make the size larger or increase my antialiasing? Thanks

Raytraced DOF needs a lot, a lot of anti alias to avoid the noise. If you use Infinite, use the hybrid dof instaed, with 3 or 4 passes. It is less accurate, but renders a bit faster, and it's noise free.

Quote - Raytraced DOF needs a lot, a lot of anti alias to avoid the noise. If you use Infinite, use the hybrid dof instaed, with 3 or 4 passes. It is less accurate, but renders a bit faster, and it's noise free.

Bruno021, I use Vue 6 Infinite. Yes It sure must need a lot. I will try the hybrid, but how much antialias would I need to use if I want to go the ray trace route? and would I just increase the "Advanced Effects Quality" from 59% to ? I was hoping Vue 6 would have improved the DOF quality. Thanks

I never set the advanced effects quality above 46%, ever.
Last time I used raytraced dof I used min 12, max 48, 75% quality for the AA settings.

I want the noise to be completely gone, so as soon as I get the time I will do a batch of test renders with many different settings to see which settings work best. If anyone beats me to it please show your results. Thanks

In these situations, with user settings, one of the most important settings is the Min number of rays.

Raising it will increase the quality of the blur, but it will also hit you with high render time depending  on your image.

In practice, for complex scenes, I found it is usually eaier to use postwork to achieve depth of field, with a photoshop plugin or otherwise.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

Agiel, Yeah I am finding this Vue DOF real frustrating. I would have hoped EON would have made something useful, but this DOF is useless IMO. I guess I will resort to a plug-in although it wil not be true DOF. Thanks!

Attached Link: http://www.dofpro.com/dofprovscgdof.htm

What is the meaning of 'true DOF' anyway as long as you are getting results you have in mind ? In some ways, plugins can give you more control than calculated 3D DOF particularly because it is not bound by a particular calculation model. Vue's DOF is working quite well in most cases. In more complex cases, it is more efficient or cost effective to use plugins. It's just two different tools in your toolbox :) Check out the results for this plugin for instance. You will see what I mean.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

Attached Link: http://market.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2244858

I looked in the backroom, under Rendering, and found an old thread where I did some tests to compare rendering times and settings (with Vue 5 Infinite at the time). I would have to run the same scene with Vue 6 to be fair but for now, you can still check it out and see if the findings still apply.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

agiel - Thanks for the link to the plugin, this looks really good, just downloaded it now. On my latest image I manually added blur inside PSP for the DOF effect because I thought doing it inside Vue would take forever without guaranteed results as I have yet to learn this process in Vue.. It's looks OK, but I really need to experiment with this concept more.

Agiel, Thank for the link. I actually Googled DOF last night and found DOF Pro but unfortunately they don't seem to have a mac version. I think Vue can create an Alpha/Depth Map. Wouldn't using this and blur in Photoshop produce similar results?

Yes, almost the same result. Load your depth map in the alpha channel of your render and use the dof filter.

What do you mean by 'use the dof filter'?

In Photoshop CS2, you have a dof filter, now my PS is in french, so I don't know how it's called in english, but it's the 3rd filter in the blur filters category.

I am just trying to figure out how to use my Z render as a gradient mask for the blur really.

My PS does not have a blur called dof blur, my third one down is called 'blur more'.

I have seen how the gradient mask works, I just have not figured it out myself is all.

If you don't have a DOF filter, here is how you can use your gradient :

1- Open your image and gradient side by side

2- Edit the gradient to make sure the range goes from black to white (using Adjustment -> Curves works best)

3- Copy your gradient

4- Set your color image to Mask mode

5- Paste your gradient into the color image. That will mask your image according to the gradient

6- Switch back to normal mode. Your mask / gradient will be transformed into a Selection

7- Go to Gaussian Blur and you should be all set

• agiel - www.linfa.net

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

Here is a more detailed version of what I tried to explain.

The main difference with a full DOF plugin is that you will end up having some minor deffects along transitions between shades of grey in your gradient.

A way to reduce that is to apply a gaussian blue to the gradient image itself before copy / pasting it into your mask .

As with many things, a lot of practice is necessary to get it right.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=756299

And here is an example of results I came up with using this technique.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

This is as far as I can get.

I can't seem to get the blur to be masked properly, on the actual render layer, after I get this far.

This looks like the mask after you paste your gradient into your image in Mask mode.

From here, you just have to switch back to regular mode and apply the blur filter to the selection.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

nm, I think I figured out what I was doing wrong.

Thank you for the steps.

I just did not have enough contrast in the mask.

Quote - I never set the advanced effects quality above 46%, ever.
Last time I used raytraced dof I used min 12, max 48, 75% quality for the AA settings.

 

Not to take away anything that Agiel has said, as his approach is great too, but read this post again. 

ALL DOF I have done uses these type of settings, and though the render will take longer, it gets rid of the crappy edges.

agiel, Thanks for the links. I read the tutorial. Can I create a "depth map Image" in Vue 6 Infinite like the one in the Poser tutorial? Any idea how to do this? Here's the image i am trying to create the depth map for. As you can see the dinosaur's neck blends into the background too much so if I could create a blurred background it would look better. Thanks!

When you render, the depth map is rendered automatically.

Look at the icons just above the frame of your render window. One has a Z written on it - it's your Z map, or depth map.

Click on it, you will see the gradient and you only have to save it the same way as you save regular images.

Hint- Do not save as jpeg as the compression can introduce black spots in your gradient. Always save as jpg.

• agiel - www.linfa.net

Save as psd is my recommendation.

You are going to be using that format already, might as well make it native.

And if you don't, then use tif for your original save.  It is a compressionless and lossless file format.(most of you probably already know that, though).