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AE CS3 and Maya : Depth of Field
Hey yall,
I know similar topics have been covered before but I have still not found a solution to my problem. I am basically trying to use AE’s ability to recognize depth maps to simulate DOF in footage rendered from maya. I have heard that RLA is the way to go. I render with both Alpha and Depth maps checked in the renderable cameras section of the render settings (is that all i need to do? i find it odd that I cannot access the compressions settings for the RLA format) and then render. I bring it into AE and this is where I start to run into problems. I cannot get AE to recognize the depth map. I have tried doing the RPF camera import thing (im assuming this is wrong because I am not using RPF) and also applying the DOF effect. Neither has worked for me yet.I am not sure if I am doing something wrong in Maya or AE or both, but I hope I have explained myself clearly enough.
Thanks in advance for any help!
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3 Replies
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ok. i have gotten AE to recognize the depth map and DOF is working, kind of. It seems that it will only blur the foreground and I cannot get it to blur the bkg instead, which is what i need.
Suggestions?
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ok. sorry. i am getting it to work ok now. it doesnt look great though. has anyone else had problems with this where the edges of objects look bad when using the DOF effect on RLA files?
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Z depth channels are inherently like this, where there is no antialising. I am going from memory here.. but try this (or something close to it):
In your render layers, create a new render layer. If you right click, there should be a presets section, with one of them called Luminance Depth. Essentially, this is a shader that is applied to all objects in your scene (for this render layer) that shades the objects based on distance from the camera.
The benefit here is that because it is shader based, it will be clean and antialiased.
If I’ve fugded this all up (as I am switching from Maya to C4D), the Maya forum would get the exact directions for you.
Harry J Frank
Freelance Motion Designer
graymachine.com
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