Implementing focal blur (depth of field) feature ?

[commanderz]

When wil we have real focal blur features in blender ?

This feature is one of the important means for good animations. I need it.

Every 3D animation package includes focal blur (depth of field) by easily using camera properties.

Are there any plans to implement it in one of the next blender releases ?

All that methods with plugins or other workarounds are very cumbersome and fault-prone.

[ideasman]

Think that the best option would be to make DOF use the same system as MOTION BLUR This is alreaty possible buy spinning the capera while tracking and object (The focal point) Thus this could be implimented in Blender with 2 IPO Added :
Apature size
Focus
Accuracy (how many points to render 4/8/16/32/48/64)

Autofocus would also be cool and a delay factor so ibjects dont focus too quick.

The while thing would work like modion blur but not pass through time when rendering.

It would be slow but look awesome.

Wouild also look nice with raytracing!
-Cam

[Pablosbrain]

Best bet is to wait till yafray is tightly integrated so you just tell it to use the yafray renderer and then set the various options for DOF for that renderer. Plus you'll have all the other options available from Yafray! But it will be a while yet till its available. I'm waiting patiently.... er... trying to at least.

[harkyman]

Or, for those of us who do animation and don't want or need to give our frames a full-on Yaffing, integration of the DOF plugin, or direct export of the z-buffer with images, like you can do with the alpha channel. This would be soooooooooo useful for a variety of post-processing effects.

[matt_e]

You can fake it with fog, but yeah, it'd sure be a hell of a lot easier if we could just save it down along with the render. Especially with things like Photoshop CS's new Lens Blur filter.

[chimera]

I dont have a blenderinstallation here so correct me if I'm wrong:
the focal blur could be added in the renderbuttons. but the other nice thing is this sorta glowing. easy setup with gimp for stills. but not for anims.

maybe it is already available, to set this. maybe in the renderbuttons -> postprocess? when unified renderer is checked.

[slikdigit]

glow is possible with the sequence editor. Harkeyman + Broken: great idea about the z-buffer; you could do a lot with that both in sequence editor and gimp. I wonder if a sequence plugin exists for this? (though it would be nice for it to happen automatically in one render pass)

[Eric]

glow is possible with the sequence editor. Harkeyman + Broken: great idea about the z-buffer; you could do a lot with that both in sequence editor and gimp. I wonder if a sequence plugin exists for this? (though it would be nice for it to happen automatically in one render pass)

Which technique does the existing zblur seq.-plugin use?

[z3r0_d]

Which technique does the existing zblur seq.-plugin use?

it blurrs based (well...) on the depth value of an image

iirc yafray uses that method too, it is fast but inaccurate in situations.

[Riskbreaker]

on top of that, zblur uses Gaussian blur in conjunction with the z-buffer render pass.

Also theres that effect that sorta looks like lense flares when light sources are blurred. Its got this wierd long name to it, i cant seem to google it out.

Still, Im satisfied with zblur. While still not accurate as it should be, it is pretty fast, good for anims too. But hey, anyone plugs in a better DOF, Im all for it.

[matt_e]

Also theres that effect that sorta looks like lense flares when light sources are blurred. Its got this wierd long name to it, i cant seem to google it out.

You mean the effect from the overlapping circles of confusion? You can fake this effect by doing a blur, but on a high definition (float, 16bit, etc) source image, but you still don't get the nice patterns from the aperture shape (eg. the hexagonal looking out of focus street lights in the city, raining at night).

[Smerity]

Riskbreaker - I think ur talking about the Bokeh effect...

Put really simply, it's "out of focus blur quality" and has a very peculiar effect on lights...


Very exaggerated example

Here are some links describing the effect (in tradional sense)
http://luminous-landscape.com/essays/bokeh.shtml
http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~parsog/Guy/bokeh.html

And here's one that lists how to fake it (albeit manually) in a graphics app... Could be done in Blender pretty easily using the Glow (not afterglow) plugin, blowing the brightness like hell and bringing down the brightness of the overall image and overlaying over the original(?)
http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_education/faking_bokeh/faking_bokeh.htm

Hope it helps =)