Monkeyfarm's Super Dooper Depth of Field Tutorial

[Monkeyfarm]

I've been thinking about how to do this for a while, then I figured it out today, and HAD to write a tutorial so other people could do it as well. I'm sure it has the potential to be a serious arrow in your quiver.

Here's a quick sample image:


Here's the PDF with the tutorial. It took quite a while to put together, so I hope it pays off for someone out there.
DOF.ZIP

It's like 700K, so if it proves to be popular or useful, then if at all possible I wonder if Aurik or someone at ZBC wouldn't mind hosting it so it doesn't kill my cable modem website account's bandwidth?

Any questions, let me know.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Monkey
Great Tutorial for the Photoshop lovers
You can't make the same with 2 or 3 Zbrush fog ?
Are you make your Ribbon Moebius with Zbrush ? It's will be useful to have a model 3D of this mathematic curiosity for an animation for example.
Pilou

[Rafael Hernandez]

Thanks for the tutorial. Very informative.

[DeeVee]

Very interesting indeed!!! well done.. thanks for sharing this information...

[Monkeyfarm]

Frenchy,

Fog would not look like this I don't think. It would add color, not diffuse the actual image.

The Mobius is a standard primitive in wings.

[Monkeyfarm]

Another bit of coolness... Try running filters other than blur when you have the DOF selection active... Very interesting!

[aurick]

Why use Photoshop?

This kind of depth masking is also easy to accomplish in ZBrush. The key is in the Depth Cue Curve within the Render>Depth Cue menu. By default, the curve has the highest intensity at the farthest point. But you can change it to a "V" shape which gives strong depth cue at both the near and far ranges. Of course, you also have to turn on the Depth Cue, the same way that you do Shadows or Fog.

After rendering, I then emphasized this by baking the layer and selectively using the Blur brush to increase the depth effect up close and far away.

Easy as pie!

[Monkeyfarm]

In the tutorial I kind of spell it out, and I do indeed mention the V curve.

Mainly because if you have a scene with a lot of detail (trees for example) how long would it take to hand re-touch the image in near and far fields to get a strong blur?

I suppose you could use the alpha as a stencil, but you would not get carry-over blur past the object edges at any given depth.

I guess I'm not saying you can't do it in ZB, but I can do it faster and with more accurate results in Photoshop. Using Photoshop I can go from ZBrush to finished image in under 2 minutes with technically acurate details based on the actual depth information.

It's not a knock on ZB, I'm just trying to give an alternative and a way to fit ZB into a more comprehensive workflow.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Monkey
As you see, for "the purists" all is almost possible in Zb
Pilou

[LD]

Is your tutorial file still there? I keep getting a; "Server not found" when I click on it.

[Mahlikus The Black]

That and the DOF effect is lost the bigger the canvas size gets....like 2500x2500.

[Monkeyfarm]

Sigh...

This was at an old location that got canned when I moved. Since that time I've had a computer crash and this appears to be one file that was not recovered, so the tutorial is lost...

Basically you use the MRGBZ grabber tool on the whole canvas to get the alpha. The alpha is depth info as a greyscale image. Save the alpha, load it in Photoshop, convert to RGB, load the main image, then drag the alpha image into a layer over your main image. Go to channels when the alpha is visable, contrl+click to create a selection, then press the save selection button.

Go back to layers, duplicate your main image's layer 2X, on efor near and one for far. blur them both, apply the alpha map as a layer mask, with one of the them be inversed (ctrl+I). Adjust level on each layer mask to control where the focal point and DOF is located.

[Digits]

Sorry you lost the file Monkeyfarm, if someone else downloaded and wants to email it to me I would be happy to put it on my Zplace site.