Frischluft or dofPRO for animation?

[tricky]

I need a tool to help be control DOF in post for an animation. Which would you suggest out of Frischluft (lenscare and flair) or dofPRO?

Frischluft is a LOT more expensive if I were to get both products.
dofPRO seems quite nice, though limited to Photoshop, from the demo I have tried. A little bit slow though...

[jacksc02]

Lenscare is really nice.
Well worth the money.
Are you using AFX?

[tricky]

Yes, we'll be using AfterFX as part of the PP, largely as a vehicle for using magic bullet. To be honest, its turning into one of those projects where we have a million ideas, but time constraints are forcing them to be dropped one at a time! dofPRO looks pretty effective and can turn an otherwise dull shot into something a bit more interesting.

[PIXELBOX_SRO]

if you want to work with stills, use DOF PRO, its perfect.
for animation and integration with AE i would go for Lenscare.
BUT
if you want something for flares........go for this!
http://www.videocopilot.net/

[dlparisi]

Just finished a job in AFX with Lenscare (as well as Out of Focus). Went very nice but honestly there wasn't too many difficult items to blur (nothing really close in front of something behind). The biggest problem I have with both lenscare and DOF PRO is how to match it to a real world lens. For example, the job I just finished was inserting elements into a studio shot of a kitchen and I knew everything about the camera and lenses used on set (f stop, focus dist, lens angle, sensor size, etc) but I really didn't know how to translate that into an equivalent z-depth image to get a matched dof in lenscare. I could pick the focus point in lenscare but I'd love a system where you could correlate the max/min values of a z map into it and tell it the f-stop, sensor size, aperature, etc. and get a match to a real camera. Anyone know of something like that or help setting it up with lenscare?

I also used reel Smart's Motion Blur to generate some post motion blur. It helped a lot to match the blur on set objects. Even though the camera was moving pretty slow through the room the addition of the motion blur made all of the difference.

[mike_kennedy]

Lenscare is nice and easy as long as your not looking for that nice Bo-ken effect DOFPro gives. I have used both but DOF Pro last I checked was pretty much confined to Photoshop which makes it a bit of work to use for animation.

[tricky]

if you want to work with stills, use DOF PRO, its perfect.
for animation and integration with AE i would go for Lenscare.
BUT
if you want something for flares........go for this!
http://www.videocopilot.net/

Thanks Martin.
I'm trying to get hold of a demo of this - any ideas?