Free Friday Tutorial #12 Easy Depth of Field in Maya (DOF)
 

In this tutorial we create a simple camera rig to give you an easy visual way to control DOF in Maya.

Easy Depth of Field in Maya (DOF) - YouTube

Njoy
Dave

Friday already! That was a quick week.
Great little tut. Very cool. I wonder about creating two stacked planes to simulate the actual width "in focus" region (DOF), but I guess that could get tricky because that also depends on cam distance from object.

This looks interesting David....will have a go later on.

cheers bullet

Here is a scene file that will do about that with physical_lens_dof in MR

Same setup as before but with 2 planes the closer they get together the shallower the depth of field. Second plane controls in focus region first one focus depth.

Just took two small expressions and it's far from perfect, just a quick 2 mins to see if it was in any way feasible. If you want to play with it and fix the parenting and what not please do.

But here it is if you want to take a look at a version that will work with MR

Dave :)

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11468835/dof_version_2.ma

Link would help, btw that one only comes with the 'it works for me guarantee' ;)

Dave

Nice little tut thanks Dave..................dave

depth of field
 

thanks Dave, great tutorial!

focus distance issue
 

When I drag and drop the distance icon intot eh focus distance slot, the focus changes automotically to one, not to the distance between the two distance points(which is ten units)...

This is so much more simple in cinema 4d ;)
But that was a nice tutorial :)

simple != good

Now, now, be nice :)

He can use a piece of software that isn't very popular in visual effects and animation if he so chooses :P

On the flip side it is much better to have the depth pass and use Frischluft...

it's faster and it's always good to have a depth pass :) but it's not better, real 3d dof is pretty much always going to look better than something done in post.

That said if it's more than a few frames i almost always fake it, real 3d dof is bloody slow!
Dave :)