DOF T3 Vs a plugin I found, and your ideas about it.

[TheBadger]

Hello.

So low and behold, nearly at the same time planetside tells us we are getting DOF, I also find a plug-in for PS and AE. Now I really wish I had this sometime ago.
But with a price tag of $200 for AE (Mac+PC), and $89 for PS (windows only?), Im not sure about things since T3 will have it.
http://www.frischluft.com/gallery/lenscare.php gallery
http://www.frischluft.com/lenscare/index.php info

So here are the questions:

1)The info link will tell you that rendering DOF adds a lot of time. Will it in T3? If so, how much? Same as motion blur? But in general Im not thinking about motion blur right now, for that a post job seems best in most situations.
2)What is the quality of T3 DOF? I have only seen two examples. They were nice! But that does not tell me if I will have everything I may need.
3)What are some examples where I would want to do DOF field in T3, and what are some examples where I should avoid it? *I mean where I would want to use the DOF in terragen because that would be best VS. using something else because that would be best.

I suppose no matter what, both will be good to have. But maybe you guys will share some ideas that will better inform me, and help me know if I should get this plug-in. Maybe another plug-in? 200 is a lot for one effect, I think.

I guess there is plenty of reason to get it for AE work. But what else should I think on?

Thank you.

[Upon Infinity]

1)The info link will tell you that rendering DOF adds a lot of time. Will it in T3? If so, how much?

On the T3 website, the DOF example added 5 minutes to the render (37 versus 32 without).  You could probably extrapolate that down to a rough percentage of how much longer it would take to add to any given scene.  As always, the greater complexity of the scene, the more time it will add.

2)What is the quality of T3 DOF? I have only seen two examples. They were nice! But that does not tell me if I will have everything I may need.

From what I've seen, the DOF in Terragen will be more than adequate for any of our needs.  Problems with rendering DOF are usually noise related, and it seems like they've got that nailed down.  Whether it can produce bokeh effects is another matter, but will probably affect few artists on this board.  I'm only concerned with how versatile it is, and how closely it resembles real camera operation.  That last one is purely preferential.

3)What are some examples where I would want to do DOF field in T3, and what are some examples where I should avoid it? *I mean where I would want to use the DOF in terragen because that would be best VS. using something else because that would be best.

It is, of course, only limited by your imagination.  But a good starting rule of thumb would be to think like a photographer or cinematographer.  DOF usually comes into play for isolating a subject (portrait, object), which is where your focus will be.  That which is out of focus, but still in the scene, is used to add context to the scene.  Photographically speaking, DOF comes into play substantially when using a telephoto lens (narrow FOV).  Wider angle lens (wide FOV) have a subtler DOF effect.

An example of where you might avoid it would be if you were doing a really wide shot of a scene (establish a scene).  And then if you were to zoom in to a particular object in your scene (and by zoom in, I mean camera stay put but the FOV is narrowed) then perhaps you want to use DOF effects to blur your foreground (grass, rocks, looking through a bush, etc.)

And you'll probably only want to use it on your final render.  No point in wasting time running through it for every little tweak you make to a scene.

I suppose no matter what, both will be good to have. But maybe you guys will share some ideas that will better inform me, and help me know if I should get this plug-in. Maybe another plug-in? 200 is a lot for one effect, I think.

Unless you have deep pockets, or have some other use besides Terragen to purchase such a plug-in, I'd recommend against it.

Hope that helps.

- C

[FlynnAD]

Hi Badger,

The Lenscare plugin is a primary staple for compositing; it has multiple settings for controlling the aperture iris, halo, bokeh, and other good stuff. Changing DOF in post is useful because it's faster, interactive, and you can even cheat it if you modify the Z-depth grayscale values. The Lenscare puts AE's native DOF effect into the kids' sandbox in terms of quality.

However, if you want TRUE DOF, then you need to render this in the actual software (e.g. TG3). That's because true DOF takes into account every object behind every other object, which post DOF plugins can only interpolate. It becomes very noticable when, in post, you try to blur an extreme foreground over a distant background, without the foreground being rendered as a separate pass; there is no data on the objects behind the foreground, so the post-DOF plugin cannot blur this correctly. You can render multiple layers as a work around, but for true DOF, you would have to render everything as individual layers if you wanted to do it all in post. Not really possible. Most of the time this is never necessary, and post DOF works fine. True DOF as a single image would be in TG3 (or other software).

The drawback of rendering true DOF inside the primary software is that if you mess up, or want to change it as some later date, or remove it, you can't. You have to re-render the scene.

If you want great examples of post-DOF (albeit perhaps overused), then see Alex Roman's famous video "The Third and the Seventh" at https://vimeo.com/7809605. This is all Lenscare DOF.

-Matt

[TheBadger]

@UponInfinity
Thanks man. The general info you brought up helped to get me on track. Felt a little fuzzy, I did. So I appreciate the clarity.
I completely missed or forgot that the render times were in the images. I sure would like so see more examples of the effect from T3! Would like to be able to get some parameters for what should be relatively fast, and slow, for DOF. There are always some surprises. Some times things go much faster than I think that they will, and other time so much slower.

@FlynnAD
Thanks a ton man! Very specific answer. And was the answer I was hoping to find. Was not entirely sure how to put the question. But that works

[TheBadger]

@FlynnAD
I take it you would recommend this plug-in personally?

*edit

Umm sorry. Could anyone remember seeing an example of a big fail in DOF on line some place? I mean in line with this: "extreme foreground over a distant background, without the foreground being rendered as a separate pass; there is no data on the objects behind the foreground, so the post-DOF plugin cannot blur this correctly" Seeing this would help me draw some boundaries for my self to work in. If no one can think of an image, thats fine. Just asking....Hmmm, would a bad tilt shift effect meet the quoted description?

Thanks again guys.

[FlynnAD]

Badger,

Here's an extreme example, photoshop'ed from Internet images, so it's a bit sloppy.

1. Regular photograph or a single rendering.

2. Trying to blur the single rendering with its corresponding single-image z-depth. Notice that there are mistakes where the background cannot be filled in (the island trees and the clouds to the upper right) because there is no actual data for the background in the original image.

3. Three-pass rendering of the fore-, mid- and backgrounds combined. Notice that when this is now blurred in post, the beach ball's colors come through. The beach ball was originally completely obscured, so without that data in the original image, the beach ball was never seen. The background island and clouds are also better. Having the beach ball as a mid-ground also allows it to be blurred without errors over the background.

For very evenly-spaced z-depth images, any errors are softened and not so noticeable. It really only happens this extremely when you are blurring the foreground or background over a vast, empty distance. But for a forest scene, which would have numerous tree-trunks, branches, etc, all at varying z-depths, you would never render out each tree or branch as a separate pass. You would either accept the results in post (w/ Lenscare providing a better solution than AE's default DOF) or use TG3's software-based true DOF.

-Matt

[TheBadger]

An excellent tut Flynn!
I believe I understand completely now. Thank you. 

Cheers