United3dArtists

Ok can somebody tell how to adjust the values for near and far. I have a tight shot of a toyblock for tessting pruposes and I want the back ground to be blurred, but nothing I do works.

Hope this will help you out. It's the way I do my D.O.F. renderings.
I did some testing with a simple scene myself last few days to get a nice realistic D.O.F. look.
The D.O.F. effect in trueSpace together with a little grain and a nice lens distortion (aberration) trick in Photoshop, gives you render a more natural look and photographic feel.

I bet I see part of my problem then. The DOF only works if you are viewing the scene through a camera? Sorry to ask such a newbie question, but I have never really used the DOF render. I am going for a very realistic scene and I want the DOF.

No it's not necessary to use a camera but it makes it easier to work that way.
I've included a scene. Drop in you own object and do some test renders yourself.
Succes.

BTW, you need to render the whole scene to see the effect of D.O.F. It just not work on partial renders.

Thanks that helped alot. Just have to adjust it a bit to my scene to make it work.

Here is my test scene. How could I get the R to be sharper? Less blurred, while keeping the others. I tired several adjustments, but not quite as sharp as I want. Is that due to the proximity of the blocks to the focal block which is the A block.

If you want to work the 3d render with a photo editor as photoshop, you can create a z buffer from your scene and use it as a mask to change the blur, contrast, color and more.

Marcel you might be able to. Me not so much. I have Photoshop, but I have no idea how to use all the advanced features.

Rjeff, make sure that the camera is looking at one of the objects. That object will be automatically in focus. Or if you are using my scene then make sure that this sphere that is used as the target for the camera to look at is at the location of the object that needs to be in focus.

rjeff wrote:Marcel you might be able to. Me not so much. I have Photoshop, but I have no idea how to use all the advanced features.

no need to know photoshop. i don't use it. i have an old photo editor and it is enought for what i do. photoshop is great for photographers or for artwork for printing. about the z buffer, it is not an advanced tool for photoshop. it is a black and white 3d render that you can made whith TS without plugin: just create a constant white shader for all objects of your scene and render the scene on a black background with the use of the fog tool (the distances near and far create a grey image, just work on the setting to do the image you want). On a photo editor use this grey image as a mask. white is near and black is far. example1: if you want to colorize the background with a color, inverse the mask, then apply the color. the transparency of the mask create a color on the background that decrease with the object near. like a colored GI from behind. example2: on the photo editor you can use a filter to create a blur motion, the transparency mask enhance the effect with the nearest object. It is only 2 examples but you can create many thing with this kind of mask especially with under water, fog, rain effect... all you need is imagination.