Zbuffer problem

[funone32]

Hey everyone, im having the hardest time with the dumbest little thing in maxwell render 1.1

 

Im trying to save a zbuffer depth shot of a rendering im doing, everything else on the list works like the alphamaps and what not, but when i save the path and file name of the render, set my zbuffer depths, and hit render... all i get after 10 minutes of waiting is a black screen and its driving me nuts cause i want to use photoshop to do some dof work... not impressed with the complexity of setting up the cameras in maxwell.

 

So, if anyone has any idea what the heck is going on, i would be very happy to hear from you. Customer service at Next Limit is as real as the lockness monster! ohh nope wait wait... i think they actually DID find the lockness monster... lol

 

thanks alot guys,

[funone32]

Almost solved my own problem...

 

It seems our brain dead friends at next limit fail to communicate how exactly the z buffer works. From the manual i understand that the minimum and maximum depths mean the distances from the camera which to begin calculating the depth map...

 

To be honest i STILL dont understand what the heck its actually calculating but... i did make progress...

 

first, you seem to have to have an active camera for the render and it is to be focussed on something... secondly, i started experimenting with the depth fields, and what i noticed was a value of 30 for the min. and a value of say 1 for the max actually for the first time since i started going crazy with this particular feature, actually produced something other then a black screen.

 

So at least i know its working... if anyone could be so kind as to explain exactly what the values mean, i've been trail and erroring it for the last hour and my deductive reasoning is not giving me a logical explination... in some cases when the values are say 100 and 100 all i get is a white silohet like an alpha map, and when the first value is larger then the second but over 30 at least, i get a very faint but noticable depth map... any value under 30 and i get black again. Doesnt make a lick of sense to me

 

would appreciate understanding all of this.

 

Thanks

[manta]

I wish I could help you out, but I have no idea, but I do have a question for you, its my understanding that maxwell will do DOF by itself, with no hit on render time, since it calculates everything whether you want to or not, why dont you just let maxwell do it...

[funone32]

Hey thanks for the response,

 

two reasons for my decision...

 

1)i made the mistake of not scaling the scene properly the first time round and thought that this would be a quick solution to the problem instead of rescaling everything and resetting my cameras

 

2) Using depth of field generator in photoshop is actually alot more flexible in that i can control the amount of depth blur far better then i can in maxwell, and not only that but i can make several alternate versions until i find one i like, rather then having to render the whole scene over and over again.

 

But now that we're on the maxwell dof issue... any tutorials out there that actually show you how to setup the cameras in maxwell rather then their typical garbage links to 'camera theory' websites? i just need to know how to make the camera, point it, and what settings do what, and next limit just sucks at explaining anything to their customers.

 

would appreciate any help you can offer.