Depth of Field for Dummy's

[Neilg]

If you're not using exposure, you can do DOF with a standard camera and get a preview in the viewport. This can then be translated to a physical camera, and you can figure out how to expose it. I've done it before but I cant remember the exact way to work it out. It's pretty straightforward though.

It's the one place where physical cameras really drop the ball imo, viewport motion blur & dof preview is amazing.

[glorybound]

This is helpful
http://www.photonhead.com/simcam/

[glorybound]

Okay. Things are starting to make sense. It seems to me that having things blurred in the foreground and no other place might not be a behavior of a camera in real life. The images that I see with a blurry vase on a table, but everything else tack sharp might be done in post.

[plastic_]

It affects the background as it affects the foreground, relative to the focus distance.
It's actually pretty easy, once you get a real camera and play around with it. i would highly recommend that. I couldn't imagine setting up render viewpoints without knowledge of real photographic tools.

Faking DOF with no plan is not a good idea, it will always look strange. the only expecption I know are those old disney films with the parallax layers. But that's a very artificial setup.

[glorybound]

so, would it be safe to see that you can use a wider lens and zoom in? Can you zoom in enough to just see a little bit of the foreground blur and your background blur would be far enough away that you wouldn't be able to see it. Or does it now work like this? I don't have a good camera; when I have time I'll do some test scenes in MAX to test my theory.

[Neilg]

Why dont you just use a standard camera? It's got viewport preview. You click a button and 2 seconds later theres DOF in the viewport.

Then turn it off and convert it to physical.

[glorybound]

I will try this today, thanks.