3D Depth of Field? Rich Pixel Rendering?
by javisuals
on
May 9, 2006 at 3:51:16 am
Can somebody explain me what Rich Pixel Rendering is?
I came across this because I was trying to apply a 3D Depth of Field operator to my composite (several layers in different Z depths to mimic Parallax) and since for some reason this operator doesn't seem to do anything to my composite I went to the Combustion help where it says that it only works on Rich Pixel Rendering.
In other words, is it possible to apply a 3D Depth of Field operator to a 3D composite to blur what is not supposed to be on focus?
Re: 3D Depth of Field? Rich Pixel Rendering? by Adam Roberts on May 9, 2006 at 10:25:48 am
Combustion does not offer Depth of Field in a 3D comp. It can however be faked. This can be done manually with a blur operator or you could do it with expressions.
Re: 3D Depth of Field? Rich Pixel Rendering? by tchikak on May 9, 2006 at 12:54:57 pm
It's a bit tricky, but if you are using C4 you can try to use the g-buffer emulator for it... create a black and white bitmap of your layers, using white for close and black for far away objects, and of course different greys in between,put a g-buffer op on the whole comp, and then a depht of field...you might have to create different bitmaps, so that the edges of each object dont blur the other intersecting objects...like i said, a bit tricky... You might as well do the dummie way (the one i use most) of just giving different values of blurs to the different layers.... to graduate blurs use a selection with a very big in-out edge feather, and over it a blur opp-it is actually a lot easier and works for footage not so demanding... i hope this guerilla stuff will help
Ricardo
Re: 3D Depth of Field? Rich Pixel Rendering? by Jeff Brown on May 9, 2006 at 1:50:49 pm
Depth of field (DoF) is typically applied using an extra "Z-buffer" channel in from a 3D rendering. Only a few formats support this extra channel; RPF is one of them. The Z-buffer is a greyscale image where the objects closest to the camera are white, and become greyer to black at far distances. This channel is fed into a compound blur operator for quasi-DoF, or a better 3D DoF filter or plugin to emulate camera focus. RPF files support many other extra channels, so many that even SD frames can be many MB in size, so it's best to render only the channels you absolutely need. There is some info on this in the Combustion manual, and a bit more info in the 3ds Max help docs.
