Depth of Field - A Blender Tutorial

[Willem3141]

First tried to figure it out myself but missed the fStop option... Now it is working because of this tutorial, thanks!

[anyoneseenmyhead]

@Willem3141 I'm glad this tutorial is still helping people out. Good luck!

[anyoneseenmyhead]

@macgeek1972 Absolutely. One thing it took me a while to realize I'd that the cursor in Blender is sensitive to the window over which it is hovering. So if you hover your mouse over the Focal Distance window and press I to make an Ipo, the context-sensitive window that appears will display an ipo for focal distance. To see the graph, change the ipo editor from Object mode to Camera mode.

[macgeek1972]

Thanks alot, great tut! Any chance you could tell me how to animate the dof distance, say to do a rack focus?

[SEspider]

Thank you SO MUCH, Josh!

In the years I've been playing with Blender, I've never had a reason to use DP. And now a projuct is coming up that requires it. You're a life saver!

[anyoneseenmyhead]

@SEspider I'm truly glad that it helped, SEspider. :)

[SEspider]

@anyoneseenmyhead

Small issue. I just tried it (2.5) and all I ever get is a Black render. I can't seem to find the Composite button anywhere in the newer version of blender. can you help? Thanks in advance

[anyoneseenmyhead]

@SEspider It looks like I'm still using 2.49. I'll have to download 2.5 and see what I can find for you.

I will say this, though. I downloaded 2.5 beta a while ago and was totally thrown by a new GUI. I don't know if this is why you are having this issue. But for me, it was difficult to navigate after being accustomed to the previous GUI. (And they might have changed it back since then?)

[geek113377]

when I go to add the filter there aren;t any filters to select, same with all the other nodes add options, nothing to add. I just reinstalled the correct version of python and blender, but still not working. What do I do?

[anyoneseenmyhead]

@geek113377 Be sure that a) You are in "Composite Nodes" (you do this by clicking the little face icon) and b) You have the "Use Nodes" button clicked.

[ajkfrty7]

DO ANY OF YOU KNOW HOW TO HAVE NO VIEW LIMIT IN GAME WITH BLENDER SO YOU CAN SEE FAR IN THE DISTANCE?

[SomeoneNamedTom]

@ajkfrty7 u can't have a no view limit. but u can make it farther than you'll ever need it to be lol select the camera, go the edit tab (F9) and then go down to where u see start and end. set the end as high as u'd like and u can suddenly see farther lol i used this to make a space game once cuz i needed to see reeaallyy far lol

[ajkfrty7]

@SomeoneNamedTom THanx.

[SomeoneNamedTom]

@ajkfrty7 yep. u should check out some of my blender vids. i think u'd like them lol

[anyoneseenmyhead]

@ajkfrty7 I'm afraid I haven't delved much into the Game Blender engine. But I can bet that there will always be some sort of view limit, at least based on your video card. You might try scaling down your models.

[js100serch]

Ohhh yeeaaa Joe Satriani- Motorcycle driver!!! I love Joe satriani and I love Blender. thanks for the tutorial ^^

[anyoneseenmyhead]

Heh heh. No problem whatsoever. Go render something and listen to Satch Boogie. You deserve it.

[blower05]

how to animate the DOF. I mean I can't insert the dof dist by pressing "I" to insert the IPO frame!!!! Help!

[EpicMonkeyFries]

If I remember correctly, if you hold the mouse cursor above the DOF window and press I, you should be able to at least animate the focus distance.

[blower05]

that's very kind of you

[EpicMonkeyFries]

HA! I didn't realize I was on my other profile. It's still Josh. This is the channel I post live action stuff on. Check it out if you get a chance. The latest stuff is the funniest.

[MrEulengott]

Thanks ^^

[anyoneseenmyhead]

No problem. It's nice to know that this tut can still be helpful.

[snuq]

nice tutorial, thanks.

only thing i would say, you should have mentioned that the samples on the defocus need to be turned way up.

[heijulien]

DoF does not Fake^^ DoF is what you see.

[ReverendFlatus]

I agree. If you're going to use sub-titles they should be readable at least and stay on screen long enough to be read.

Apart from that, a useful tutorial, thanks. I'm off to try it all out now...

[anyoneseenmyhead]

Duly noted. And to be frank, I agree. The next tutorial I did had a voice-over.

[Pivotboy13]

Great Tutorial Man! I have been looking for this for weeks. =) BTW, I noticed that you can render very quickly. What are your specs?

[anyoneseenmyhead]

On the laptop that I was using at the time? Heh.

1.61 GHz and 992 MB of RAM.

But... You'll notice that I was rendering in preview mode and without oversampling on. And I also sped up the render in post. Hehehehe.

For my other animations (and using my desktop computer), it normally takes about an hour to render a ten second shot.

I'm a very patient man.

[tek5828]

Hay, Nice tutorial helped me alot!- one problem, if i dont have anything behind like a plane or somthing and just have background 'world' colour (blu 4 default) It turns black and i have pixles around my objects..

Any ideas? thanks

[anyoneseenmyhead]

I'm trying to make it do the same thing on mine, but I'm unable. If you'd like, you can send me the .blend file and I'll take a look at it.

[tek5828]

Ok will do tomoz - and its not really one blend file, ive been experimenting but ill send you a test file-

Thanks

Tek-

[anyoneseenmyhead]

I was playing around with this today, and I ended up getting the same problem you had. I found that if I left Gamma Correct disabled, the sky came back and everything worked just fine. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on that one.

[tek5828]

Hay, gamma correct- ok ill check that out, thanks and no probs man :D

[mawc14]

an hour for a 10 sec shot? takes me max 25 mins

[anyoneseenmyhead]

It depends on how much is in frame. The Plex & Scorch videos sometimes take me eight hours, because there are so many faces, and it all moves.

[a2zhandi]

Great tip. Thanks