Depth of Field in animation

[porco]

Hi all, this is my first post  

I've been trying to make an animation with DOF and trying to control where I want the focus point to be. (In the animation I'm just keyframing the camera toward and eventually inside a fractal.) Obviously the closer you get to the fractal, the smaller the Z1 and Z2 sharp values need to be in order for it to keep focused on the same spot. What I've tried is to change the Z1 and Z2 sharp values so that as still-frames, each keyframe is in focus in the same spot I want. When I animation preview it, however, it doesn't seem to be changing these Z sharp values as it goes along - when it animates to the keyframe I gave the right focus to before, it's completely blurred. It's as if the Z sharp values actually just stay in whatever value you first gave it and doesn't animate.

Could you please tell me what I'm doing wrong, or point me to an alternative workflow? Do people just do it in post using some kind of depth pass? Is there a depth pass option?

Thanks so much!

[Don Whitaker]

I have made a few animations with DOF changes on keyframes . I'm rendering one right now, actually. I usually set all keyframes to DOF that looks good for one main spot. After tha tI go to each keyframe and adjust the DOF settings again, using Get Z1 and GetZ2. When the render looks good I save that frame back to the anim palette and move on to next keyframe.

Have you tried actually rendering a section of the animation in low resolution? It may be that your DOF settings are correct but they are not showing correctly in the Animation Preview mode. The preview mode isn't always spot-on with the final pics, though I'm not sure what exactly is different there.

[porco]

Thanks for your reply Don and thanks for your tutorials on youtube they've helped a lot.

I've done exactly that and my DOF doesn't seem to change.. I've checked each keyframe to make sure the Z1 Z2 sharp values are changing and they are. Actually even the very first frame is slightly off and blurs in a different area than the view panel.. And yes these are proper renders from the render button on the bottom of the animation window.

I also tried changing "Sorted" to "Forward" in the DOF tab to see what it did but I don't think it changed anything?

[Don Whitaker]

hmm... i dunno.    I could take a look at the .m3a file if you like. Maybe I could see what is happening.

[porco]

PMed you the file!