Cheating Atmospheric Perspective

[Darby Edelen]

[Beatriz Hopkins] “Could you please tell me how to achieve the illusion of atmospheric perspective or Depthh of field in After Effects using the Luminance Depth Layer from Maya? “

I’m not sure how familiar you are with this process inside of AE, so I’ll begin from the beginning.

AE has some effects that can extract 3D channel information out of certain specific file types (RLA/RPF, EI/EIZ, PIC/ZPIC, etc). For more information see the AE documentation here:

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a9d3c597-7bd8.html

Once you have the desired channel extracted (or rendered from Maya) you can use it to drive a Lens Blur effect (which takes a grayscale image for depth) for Depth of Field or you can use it as a matte for a Levels/Curves adjustment to add some fog.

There are also Fog 3D and Depth of Field effects in the Effect > 3D Channel menu, but these don’t seem to give as much control as matting and Lens Blurring.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA