animation walkthrough with zdepth?

[mattyt]

Hi and apologies if this has already been answered on previous posts.

 

I have an animated camera that moves very slowly over a short distance within my scene (3D Max and Vray) and am wondering if I can use the zdepth pass to create DOF in AE?

 

I am unsure how this works as the Zdepth seems to only be for one frame and not for the camera path. (Do I need to render out multiple Zdepth pass's - can you even do that?)

 

If anyone can share their knowledge with me on this or point me to a tutorial it would be greatly appreciated.

Edited March 21, 2013 by mattyt

[John Dollus]

you can add it as a renderpass and you will get a zdepth sequence or you can submit a separate job with all of the GI/maps etc turned off

[mattyt]

Hey thanks for the response, that's a big help.

Is there a preferred way to do this (simplistic or quickest) while rendering out the animation?

I would like to start of with the best work flow possible if possible.

Cheers

[Jason Matthews]

Simply add the render element in the render setup dialog box. Make sure Vray is setup to save the channels as separate files also in the render setup box. You can add many different elements.

[adrianbaragan]

As Jason said, you can add the render element in the render setup dialog. Basically you will get an additional grayscale frame for each frame rendered, where closest point to the camera is white and farthest point is black. For the parameters, I always use "zdepth use camera clip bondaries", in this way being able to chose these points from the camera parameters (even if camera clipping is unchecked in the camera parameters, the near clip and far clip distances will feed your zdepth min and max distances).

The render element output file has the same name as the main render output file, until you change the file type of the render element. If you change it, the link is "broken" and then you have to manually set the name for the render element each time you change the render output. (it's good to know especially as you asked for a simple and quick workflow).

 

In post-production you can use for example Frischluft Depth of Field for After Effects, where you will feed in the zdepth sequence in the zdepth layer field of the Frischluft Dept of Field.

 

Let me know how it goes.

[meherthakker]

read this from adobe's site

 

"Dave Scotland provides a pair of tutorials on the CG Swot website in which he demonstrates how to create RPF files in a 3D application and how to use RPF files in After Effects. The first part explains the RPF format and how to create RPF files in 3DS Max. The second part shows how to use the Object ID and Z depth information in an RPF file within After Effects, using the ID Matte, Depth of Field, Depth Matte, and Fog 3D effects."