DOF in Post

[glorybound]

When I use DOF in VR, my times are huge. An 1hr scene bloats to a 7hr scene. So, I am trying to use PS, the zdepth pass, and reveal all mask layer in PS. I am finding that I don't have very good control. My question is: when creating your zdepth pass, do you have a shallow depth, or do you use the entire depth of your scene? My zdepth pass looks correct, but it's not working. How are you doing it in post?

[joconnell]

Yeah generally you do the full length of the scene so everything blurs correctly in relation to everything else. It's definitely not without problems though, so alex roman's approach of render the foreground and background separately gets around a lot of the really big problems. I'd be curious about your render settings though, DOF really shouldn't add that much of a factor. Have you looked into shade maps for it?

[glorybound]

no, I never did try the shade maps. It seemed a little complicated, and I didn't fully understand it, so I didn't try. I'll set some time aside for it.

[joconnell]

It seems to be a guide that vray can use for how rays bounce around the scene and seems to massively accelerate DOF - might be well worth it judging by the render times you mention.

[snivlem]

I think z depth passes work best at 16 or better 32 bit and try and turn off filtering.

[tooves]

I usually do the extent of what the camera sees. If you save as floating point you can crunch your z-depth pass in post to a pretty extreme level without too much banding.

I have finally got around to testing shade maps for fast DOF and MB today. Its quite amazing what you can get with it. I have only played with stills so far. About to try it out on an animation.

Doesn't seem to be any good documentation for using shade maps in this way for animation though (ie workflow with moving objects, pre-calced GI etc).
I have found a number of threads on the forum with a lot of half thoughts and questions, but nothing solid.

[voltron7]

+1 for shade maps/stereoscopic helper...just fantastic.
Also, IMO, Z-depth and Lenscare are good for post DOF.

This is a nice link for using shade maps for DOF...
http://www.mattguetta.com/2011/01/17...vec-v-ray-2-0/

[glorybound]

When I add the helper, it no longer applies the DOF. And, I am not sure what the shademap file is doing? I pointed the file to a shared location, but it didn't create a file. Am I missing something?

+1 for shade maps/stereoscopic helper...just fantastic.
Also, IMO, Z-depth and Lenscare are good for post DOF.

This is a nice link for using shade maps for DOF...
http://www.mattguetta.com/2011/01/17...vec-v-ray-2-0/

[peterguthrie]

if you have access to the nightlies try the latest build, it fixed the problems I was having (related to not creating/finding shademap files)

[glorybound]

how do I find nightly builds?

if you have access to the nightlies try the latest build, it fixed the problems I was having (related to not creating/finding shademap files)

[voltron7]

I have noticed the files save but something is still weird with that...It adds a bunch of zeros to the end of the file name (annoying.) It also seems to act weird if you try to create more than one shademap in the same directory.
I now make a directory for each shade map I'm going to generate. Also seems as the rendering has to complete 100% or the map won't be saved...(this is with night-lies 2.35.01.)
Aside from these minor annoyances, it is still great for in-scene DOF...

[voltron7]

how do I find nightly builds?

emailing vlado, would be best way to get access IIRC...