Is P4 Depth Cueing of any real value? I understand its purpose, but whenever I apply it to even the most brightly lit scenes it casts a black pall over everything. Except for very close objects it usually obscures them beyond recognition. Does anyone find this feature useful? Have I missed something?

Yes, it really works, although it can be challenging to set up properly. Depth cue can be used to create hazy, murky, or foggy scenes. The colour is determined by the background colour (or background image). The strength of the effect is determined by the object furthest from the camera.

Poser 5 gives you a bit more control over the feature.

Video clip with depth cue (MPEG format, 557KB)

Well, it sure worked with your great little video! Many thanks. Still, I don't know why my scenes go almost black.

Your scenes probably go black because there are objects very close to or behind the camera. There is a bug in the (P4) calculations that misinterpreted the scene depth under these conditions, making it only really useful if most of the scene is set up in front of the camera (like a studio). Bill

If you want a little more control over your depth cueing, you can do it in post-processing, like this: First, generate a depth map by enabling depth cueing, turning off all the lights, setting the background color to white, and zeroing all ambience, and rendering the scene. (This information is courtesy of williamsheil.) Now, feed your original render and the depth map to Defocus Dei, a $69 program by MooTools (formerly Blackfeet), at http://www.mootools.com/plugins/us/defocus/index.htm . The program does all sorts of interesting depth-of-field effects (depth of field, atmospheric perspective, saturation, hue, and luminosity, depending on depth). It is a lot quicker to try different variants in post then by rerendering again and again. Of course, for animations, you'd have to render as individual frames, run the frames through DefocusDei, then put them back together, which might be a pain. Lynn Grant Castle Dev Group

Attached Link: http://valstuff.members.easyspace.com/freedomstuffs_000005.htm

When combined with Photoshop, Depth Cuing can be used to simulate Depth of Field blurring. Above is a link to a brief tutorial I did based on this technique, and I have two pics in my gallery that show what it's like.

Remember, kids! Napalm is Nature's Toothpaste!

Thanks for all the info. I happened across it by accident and didn't know what it was....I assume this is depth cuing?

It gets really interesting when applied to a background picture, because the object in front of it turns rather transparent like a ghost.

L'ultima fòrza è nella morte.

Sincere thanks for the many helpful responses. Much to chew on.

If you put a small sphere behind the main object and start moving it away from the camera, you can, by trial and error, control the amount of "fog" with quite acceptable precision.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=244248

Here's a sample image where I used depth cuing to create a "mask" layer" for blurring the original, non-depth cued image... presto, depth of field.

Remember, kids! Napalm is Nature's Toothpaste!

Valandar: Fantastic!