[Keiichi Matsuda]

Hi Cory, thanks for the feedback.

Maybe I didnt explain well enough..
The focus planes are set up correctly, I only need a blurry foreground- here a sample from the depth map:

If i invert the map, it works perfectly well in keeping the foreground in focus, and blurring the background, but this is the opposite to what I’m after.
Problem is that as black=’in focus’, the edges of the white branches are sharp, instead of blurry as they should be. When this is used in the lens blur, anything inside the white area blurs correctly, but the edge is still crisply defined.

You get me?

[Keiichi Matsuda]

by the way, it works fine if I want the background blurred out, and the front branches in focus..
Have also tried setting an adjustment layer with a fast blur on it, with the depth map as a luma matte, but this is still limited by the confines of the white areas (more sharp edges).

Seems ridiculous that the C4D depth pass is unusable in AE..

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Maybe obvious, but just to check.. have you got any lights in the scene, or forgotten to turn ‘accept lights’ too off in material options?

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Not sure if anyone will be reading this, but I cant believe this issue hasnt been resolved..

Im working with C4D, but I’m having the same problem. I’ve got a 3D tree, and I want to blur out the branches closest to the camera, so ive rendered a depth pass that is mostly black, with the closest branches in grey and white.
The problem is the same as Caleb’s. Lens blur sees the surrounding black background as ‘in focus’, meaning the white branches don’t blur beyond their confines- sharp edges.

I thought it might be possible to use an adjustment layer with fast blur, and the depth map as a luma matte, but it doesnt work..

What we need is an all white matte, with the branches further away fading into black. Its frustrating, as I feel that all the info is there.. I just want to blur the white bits!! Is there a workaround?

Thanks in advance.

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Thanks for your suggestions everyone!

I was hoping that you were right with the transparency, but no banana. Not to worry, I ended up zooming up and taking a load of screen grabs, then patching them together and using colour selects/expand selections to thicken the lines up. Not the most efficient way, but needed to get it done.

Thanks again!

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Thanks for your quick replies.
When i select wireframe in the render settings, I end up with a blank white psd (i am ‘saving image as a file’ as i only require one frame). Im after a file with a black background showing all my 3D null objects etc. The idea of using a grid effect is nice, but not ideal as it wont show the null objects and will be quite time consuming as i have many layers in the project.
Is this white screen an anomaly? does it usually look as it does when viewed in wireframe preview?

[Keiichi Matsuda]

No, pretty confused about this error actually.. had a check on the AE help file, but not using any time-based effects or anything on that list as far as i can recall. Do you know how an expression could trigger this message?
Its annoying to have an 8-core and then only use 1 processor! This is not such a biggie though, I will just render while i sleep for this project- its an equal danger to spend all my time trying to sort it out, haha.

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Yeah, thats what i thought too… but maybe it preloads an image cache or something? (sorry, these are just words.. dont know if they are the right ones).
Sorry yes, I made a new project file and imported it. Have just tested with a new comp in the same (original) project file, and it starts after only a minute or so! So must be that solo-ing a layer is somehow different from having the layer in its own comp. Another thing kind of backs this up; when the layer is in its own comp, multiprocessing is fine, but when solo-ed, I get the incompatible effect/expression error despite the fact that the guilty layer (wherever it may be) is turned off.
How frustrating. Will try to reduce the complexity of the project by pre-rendering as per your advice, hopefully ill be able to bring the wait down a bit.
Thanks for your help, let me know if you think of anything else!
Kei

[Keiichi Matsuda]

The wireframe is pretty subtle, so I reckon you could fudge it by drawing something that looks a bit like a wireframe over the face in illustrator or something, then motion tracking the face to get the ‘wireframe’ to follow the movement. This wont stand up if the face rotates too much, but by playing with transparency and adding scale/position keyframes, you could ‘fake’ it if its only going to be in the shot for a second or so.
If you want to do it properly, you’ll probably need some move-matching software- I know that PFTrack will do something similar to this, but its pricey.
You could make the blue fairly easily with a masked/keyframed adjustment layer. Make keyframes for the start and end frames first, then add more until you get what you want; it wont be every frame.

Merry Christmas!

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Hello,

Do you want to move the layer to a new position, or do you want to animate it’s movement?
For a new position, click on the ‘position’ property to highlight all keyframes, then simply click and drag.
To animate, create a new null object and parent the layer to it. You can then apply transformations/keyframe position of the null object, and the motion tracked layer will follow it.

Wohoo!