blur and depth

[AlanPS]

I've searched the forum a little bit and did not find what I'm looking for. I've played around with all the parameters of depth/blur in the project settings and in the layer properties.

I'm doing an aerial view of a neighborhood. The camera will pan down through some clouds and come to rest person height above the ground.

I've got the ground layer at about -1.5 so it is far from the camera. I have the clouds pasted on different layers with layer depths of 0, -.25, -.5, -1.

I want the ground to be a bit blurry and come into focus as the camera goes downward. I've tracked the camera from default to just above the ground but the ground stays the same level of blurriness from a distance as it does close up.

Should I manually unblur the ground from within its layer properties gradually or is there something I'm missing?

Thanks

[Genete]

Is the camera paralel to the ground plane? Perhaps may be depth blurr only works for layers perpendicular to the camera.

-Genete

[rplate]

I've searched the forum a little bit and did not find what I'm looking for. I've played around with all the parameters of depth/blur in the project settings and in the layer properties.

I'm doing an aerial view of a neighborhood. The camera will pan down through some clouds and come to rest person height above the ground.

I've got the ground layer at about -1.5 so it is far from the camera. I have the clouds pasted on different layers with layer depths of 0, -.25, -.5, -1.

I want the ground to be a bit blurry and come into focus as the camera goes downward. I've tracked the camera from default to just above the ground but the ground stays the same level of blurriness from a distance as it does close up.

Should I manually unblur the ground from within its layer properties gradually or is there something I'm missing?

Thanks

Are you rendering the file first. I don't think the blur shows until you render the file in quicktime. Or single frame render.

[Squeakydave]

I think AS works out the depth of field blur from the centre of rotation so that could be why you ae still getting the blur. You could try changing it to where your camera lands.

[AlanPS]

My camera is facing the ground plane. I've also rendered the shots and even a test animation. Don't know what I'm doing wrong.

I'll play around with it some more and see if anything changes.

[Rhoel]

Check your project settings. Go into file/project settings and make sure you have 3D camera on, Sort layers by Depth, sort by true distance.
The proble mwith this is you cannot change the settings during the scene.

If you want to pull focus between foreground and background, put all the foreground layers in one folder and the Background stuff in another: Then animate the blurs on the timeline - this works well, done it myself before.

You might want to turn off your scale compensation in the layer settings too - can make a big difference.

Here is a demo: Left set has scale compensation on, the right has no scale comp - there is a difference. The layers are set -0.75 apart on the z axis.



Hope this helps.

Rhoel


BTW: If you are pulling focus from foreground to background - add a little camera zoom (1-2%) to the focus transition.

In real life, lenses are mechanical things and the lens barrel physically moves - this creates a zoom change effect. By adding this little little zoom move, you re-create the physical "defect" of camera lenses ... it looks better.

If you go from foreground to distance, add a zoom. If you go from far to near, zoom out.

Just a little compositing trick which helps "sell" the effect.

[AlanPS]

Rhoel
I recently checked my project settings and to be honest I think it was the depth sorting and sort by true depth that were messing me up. When I unchecked those the blurring looks right. Funny that before it didn't seem to do anything. Guess I wasn't doing something right.

I was also confused between the differences of zooming and tracking the camera along the z depth. Didn't occur to me that tracking refers to the physical position of the camera where zoom is just the lens doing its thing.

But thanks for the useful info. With the methods you're describing can you pull off the Alfred Hitchcock Vertigo effect? I was told there is an actual name for it but I'm not sure what it is. The Simpsons have done mock effects like that also.

Thanks

[Genete]

More info about depth of field and Hitchcock's Vertigo trick:

http://www.lostmarble.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=363

Have fun!
Genete

[Touched]

Yeah, the name of the effect is a "depth of field shift".