Reading through the manual, it sounds like the Depth Cue feature is no longer rendered in the final output... Page 140: "Depth cueing and shadows do not effect your rendered output" and Page 145: "...While rendering high-resolution output using the currently selected display styles and/or depth cueing, etc. is not directly supported..." Is this a typo(s) ?

Looks like Depth of Field (aka Focal Distance) is non-animatable too. Would others concur? As 1 of the 12, this is another thing I'm majorly bummed about if true. I was hoping it would be a camera parameter. I hope not, but it looks like I'm back to doing rendering of multiple layers, then comping and animating DOF in After Effects again. Adding this simple feature could have saved animators a LOT (as in HUGE amounts) of time. Any chance this could be patched in later?

Looks that way to me too. No depth queuing, no animatable depth of field and no depth render output option spells bad news all round for animators. Still they have Python still, so someone may just yet provide a post production option ;-) Bill

I just rendered a depth cue animation in P5. I'm not sure why you'd want to render with depth cueing, but it's still there if you render the animation in screen preview settings. Are we talking about the same depth cueing that you toggle on/off to the right of the display window?

Yeah, I was a little disappointed to read that too (I was hoping they'd add some depth cue control actually, heh). I wonder if you could export an anti-aliased depth cued preview as a PSD or PNG file with an alpha channel though, load the mask in your 2D program and fill with black or white and get the same result as we used to... Oh well, least there's lots of new stuff to play with to make up for it. :) SnowS Hoping his pictures are worth 1001 words.

Kupa, yes, the Depth Cue feature on the right of the display window... it creates a fog-like effect. I use it often in still renders. I don't understand why it would only be used in preview mode, so I assume that's a typo in the manual?

The depth cueing only works in preview modes. It's intended as a visual cue to situate objects in world space. It's not a volumetric fog. That's why my curiousity is piqued. We can "render" out preview modes with depth cueing on for stills or animations, but neither the FireFly nor the base P4 renderer support this, actually, this preview render is merely the preview being converted into a frame or still. It's not a typo, but a clarification of what preview options are not handled in "P4 or FireFly renderings"

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=95220&Start=73&Artist=Spanki&ByArtist=Yes

I guess I should point out that the lights used in the image above are directional (not spots), so the only thing causing the fade-to-black or "lack of light as you get deeper in the image" is depth cueing.

Depth Cuing is handy to use in postwork as a photoshop blending mode to get a foggy effect. I wish I could use it as an alpha channel in large new window renders.

Erm... that is, you can use the alpha channel in post work, you may have meant using it as an alpha channel fed back into Poser (?).

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

Oops.. forgot to check the nudity flag ;)

Yah gots to be quick man! ;). Actually, most of mine were from previous renders, I just had to go look them up ;).

I was thinking more like having the option of having an alpha channel automatically saved.. ie: click a box that says "Save depth cue alpha channel?" I do tire of rendering each image 4-9 times to generate the alpha channels I need. ;)

You got me. I just did a test render. The Poser 4 renderer in P5 does indeed render the depth cue data. FireFly does not though. I'm learning still. Kupa

Any chance a Python Script could make the Depth of Field animateable. This is one of the most disappointing aspects of the renderer for me (and a lot of animators) about the release. (They were so close! I was hoping to do a lot of renders in Poser itself. Now it looks like more tons o'-comping in After Effects and rendering in other programs. Any Python gurus out there?

Spanki: So are you using the alpha basically as a Z-buffer? That would be really nice if Poser let you output Z-buffer images like a lot of other 3D apps, so you can do depth effects in After Effects, and of course Photoshop for you still renderers.

Kupa, If you are still learning, we are going to spend the next year with brains spinning like hamster wheels! Oh, the torture! Oh, the agony!!! Just siphon the coffee directly to my veins. Carolly

"The Poser 4 renderer in P5 does indeed render the depth cue data..." Whew, thanks Kupa! I guess the manual is halfway correct then ;). "FireFly does not though." I guess that begs the question... I don't recall reading anything about it, but it sounds like there's no fog or fog-like feature in the FireFly renderer? I guess we can still do the 'multple, strategically positioned semi-transparent planes' trick to simulate it. Tim, sort of... It's not really a depth-buffer, but due to the nature of the operation, it does kinda simulate one. I don't currently have the Adobe products, so I don't know what format they are expecting for the depth buffer, but the alpha channel could be viewed as an 8 bit gray-scale if that works (most depth buffers are normally 16 or 32 bits).

I've never really paid attention, that'sa good question. I just know Z-buffers are to die for if you want to add fog, rain, distance blur, etc., etc. in AE. They make life so much easier ... AND FUN!

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Just been away for a couple of days. so I missed these posts. The reason I was concerned about depth queues was related to the absence of animatable depth of field (ie for doing focus pulls or varying the focal distance with the movement of a character through a scene). If P5 supported depth render outputs that would be sufficient (or even preferrable) as the variable distance blurring could be added in post production. In P4 it is possible (but not reliable) to produce a depth render using depth queing by killing all the lights and ambience, setting the background colour to white and rendering with depth queing, which renders close up objects black and blends to white at greater distances. The problems with this method in P4 were due to bugs in the algoritm when some object origins were close to, or behind, the camera plane. If these have been fixed (I submitted a fairly extensive bug report to CL) it would still be possible to use the P4 renderer to generate the depth map and use it to add depth of field to a firefly rendered image, but the image may not exactly match up. Python will provide a solution as well, so long as the relevant renderer settings are accessible, and it was also possible in ProPack to 'fake' a more reliable depth queing method with a (large) number of semi-transparent planes with white ambience parented to the camera. Bill

Bill, I think I follow what you're saying, but do you have an image (or two) that illustrates it?

Using guide planes will, of course, give a better gradience, but at the end of the day this just won't work if there are any objects level with or behind the camera. Bill

Ditto! That's exactly what I was talking about when I was mentioning Z-buffer. So I could at least animate depth of field in post. Glad I'm not the only one out there who wants to animate this property. Although there are only 12 of us (animators) to begin with anyway. I'm hoping a Python guru could make the a script that allows the DOF to be animateable. It seems like it could be possible since it is a variable in the render options. -Tim