I sorta derailed a thread on a totally different topic. Figured I should start my own lol. Sorry about that (it was early am, i had no caffine yet and couldn’t read).
So anyway. Flamingo 2.0 is supporting this new post process dof through its vfb. I know that its using the zbuffer info to rapidly redraw the image with a blur. I have found a few software packages in the past that tried to mimic this but did a pretty poor job.
However, today i was out looking again and stumbled upon this one.
At 60.00 bucks you almost cant say no to it. I tried it out with a sample rendered in vfr with the Zbuffer option added. It worked like a champ. It was fast and accurate. I would love to have this ability native to Vray, i mean would you honestly render with DOF on after having this ability as post process? click click done!
Here’s a sample screenie i snaged from PS. This was literally an Open - Apply filter, adjust slider for amount of blur.. done!
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
you can fake this by just using ps filter gausian blur over a selection and wont it pretty much get the same effect?
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
No! 
DOF can be so beautiful and Vray support many of the the DOF effects. Look here:
A gaussian blur is very simple blur only and not dependent from the distance. The DOF plugin support some of the real camera lens effects, but in my tests I have got ghost effects. I prefer the Vray DOF.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
I agree. The suggestion here though is for a Post Process DOF similar to the one added in Flamingo 2.0. This would drastically reduce render times, plus could give more control over advanced circles of confusion such as aperture shape. These are things that can be done via Zbuffer’s and Alpha’s much faster than calculating circles of confusion during renders. I mean if we can shave off 12 minutes in a render and achieve a more flexible dof via posting why wouldn’t we? After all just because you can, doesn’t always mean that you should.
Andre the dofpro plugin goes a bit beyond whats achieved by using PS and guasian blur alone. It has real time control, click focusing from fore to background as well as custom tuning of aperture shapes and lenses. You should try the demo. You’ll be hooked after that.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
try this interactive web demo.
click around on different areas of the chess board and watch the DOF recalculate. This super quick.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
Post process DOF is a great tool for quick simple things (for animations its a God send), but I’m going to have to go with Micha on this one…The results from V-ray DOF are going to be much better. I think in most situations the difference might be negligable, but with more complex scenes (out of focus lights, reflections, refractions) there’s no way post process can beat it. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to have this…I’m just saying that post process DOF is not going to be the same as the physically calculated DOF.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
Yes I agree with that and am not trying to say that it’s “better”. My point is that post processed DOF can yield great results for far less render time and has the fantastic ability to change by click click click vs re-rendering what might be a long render time scene. It’s a nice tool, it’s not a replacement, but an addition. so quit tossing rocks at me lol!
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
Not tossing rocks…but just adding my 2 cents (it may be worth more or less than that…probably less)…What I think would be cool is if there could be some sort of “mid-process” DOF that actually worked off of the raw framebuffer data and could better handle some of those tricky situations…Maybe it would require an AA post pass (after the DOF is set), but that seams to me like it would be a bit more of the best of both worlds.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
lol worries. hopefully you guys know i was laughing when i wrote that. all in good fun. I know what you’re saying. Go play with the dofpro demo though. I think you’ll be very interested when done.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
I know
Personally, when I do do post DOF I’ll use combustion for it (to be honest I didn’t realize you could use PS). And for animations, mock ups of DOF effect, and other things it does helps a lot. But for final stills, if its using DOF its through V-Ray.
BTW there wasn’t much response when I first posted it, but I wrote a script that helps with DOF preview through clipping planes…hope someone finds it useful
Here it is: Chaos: Industry-leading design and visualization software
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
Well I think what I find most appealing about this post thing is the aperture shape. Check this out.
Number 9 is sexy, i don’t care how it was made =)
I can’t pull this off in vray that I am aware of.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
Wow…thats quite impressive…V-Ray does have control of the aperture shape (bokeh effects), but to be honest I haven’t messed with them too much. I think between the shape and simulating a little bit of camera shake (w/ motion blur) you could get most of those effects. They are cool, but is there any basis for them, or is it just an experiment. Like number 4 doesn’t seam like you’d find that in any standard lense.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
dunno but number 9 for jewelry renders is godly. and click click done i am a big fan of.
Re: Post Process DOF native through VFB
I suppose so it’s an interactive image based on precalculated images like it can be done with Pano2QTVR.
Interesting is, that the example show my biggest problem with post DOF: if a blury object is in the forground, the foreground object show a sharp ghost mixed with the blury object. If you focus at background object you will see it.