Depth of field - any way to prevent avatar from being blurred?

[MelodicRain]

Is there any way to prevent the avatar itself from being blurred when DoF is turned on, no matter how I reposition the camera? This will be super useful when taking photos. It seems DoF is not able to tell avatars from backgrounds and just blurs both.

[Rowan Amore]

There is a DOF lock in Firestorm that locks focus on your avatar or whatever you cam lock onto. Atl+left click

[Rowan Amore]

On 3/16/2021 at 4:09 PM, Jackson Redstar said:

in the latest release of Firestorm 6.4.13 (63251) - they have added a DOF lock (shift alt X) - AND it works with flycam mode activated! No more hovering your mouse cursor over the subject to 'lock' the DOF - which if the subject is moving can be nearly impossible at times. This is something that filmmakers have needed for years

From a couple of years ago.

[MelodicRain]

Thanks that worked. It's not perfect (edges of avatar are still blurred) but better than nothing.

[sandi Mexicola]

You can turn DoF up or down some, that might help.

[Jackson Redstar]

this is how I keep DOF the only adjustment (firestorm viewer) i will make based on the situation and/or the amount of DOF is Foc Length. I also almost always have DOF follows pointer checked and use shift+alt+x to lock it

[MelodicRain]

There must be something I'm doing wrong - DoF is extremely wonky, most of the time it blurs ONLY my avatar and leaves rest of the environment unblurred no matter how much I play with sliders. I have DoF lock on, and hold alt + click my avatar to focus camera on her. What am I doing wrong?

[TalentBoy]

Try this :  DOF  and "focus follow pointer" 

Place pointer on chest  and  CTRL +SHIFT+S  (that will lock the pic you want ) and push save.

works for me on more or less static poses

[Nalates Urriah]

DOF is important when making machinima as there is no easy alternative. (That I know of)

For snapshots capture two images, one using the viewer's color setting and a second  using depth. Both in the camera/snapshot panel. Then use a blur tool in your image editor that allows the use of a depth map. This later gives the most control. However, the viewer's DOF and settings will give great results with only a little less control.

So depending on personal preference and what you want to accomplish... the viewer does a more than adequate job.

[SabrinaCooke]

You can try taking your pic without DOF into an editing program like GIMP or PS, making a copy and adding Gaussian Blur to it, then masking out the avi from the GB layer. That way you can control the sharpness of the avi's edges. 

[Jordyn McGregor]

I've been trying all this advice too, but my problem is that on my screen the background is blurred nicely, but I take the pic and its all in focus and not what my screen shows at all.  What step am I missing?

[ValKalAstra]

32 minutes ago, Jordyn McGregor said:

I've been trying all this advice too, but my problem is that on my screen the background is blurred nicely, but I take the pic and its all in focus and not what my screen shows at all.  What step am I missing?

It's been a while since I approach my pictures in a different way (using injected shaders and dynamic super resolution instead) but if memory serves, depth of field settings are tied to a specific resolution. Thus if you set it up to be just right with your screen resolution - but then go and set it to a higher resolution in the snapshot window, it will mess up the depth of field. Black Dragon at some point had a function (or still has? haven't used that in a while) to automatically approximate the settings, I'm not sure whether any of the other viewers do.

 

[Jordyn McGregor]

21 minutes ago, ValKalAstra said:

It's been a while since I approach my pictures in a different way (using injected shaders and dynamic super resolution instead) but if memory serves, depth of field settings are tied to a specific resolution. Thus if you set it up to be just right with your screen resolution - but then go and set it to a higher resolution in the snapshot window, it will mess up the depth of field. Black Dragon at some point had a function (or still has? haven't used that in a while) to automatically approximate the settings, I'm not sure whether any of the other viewers do.

 

So if I am reading what you are saying right, I should have my snapshot window set to screen size?

[ValKalAstra]

2 hours ago, Jordyn McGregor said:

So if I am reading what you are saying right, I should have my snapshot window set to screen size?

That's one possible way but you'd lose the advantages of a higher resolution. I think the preview window is accurate towards the actual end result but it's tiny. So in theory you could configure your depth of field to look right in the preview but honestly, I should probably shut up at this point and let others talk. Sorry, been too long since I used things in viewer.

I do remember Orwar making a good tutorial about depth of field in editing, using editing and basically taking one picture normally and one of just the depth information.

 

[Orwar]

3 hours ago, Jordyn McGregor said:

So if I am reading what you are saying right, I should have my snapshot window set to screen size?

   That's one solution. Another is to over-do the DoF for a higher resolution image. DoF and shadows both work the same way when taking snapshots, if you've got a 1920x1080 display and tinker with the DoF and shadow smoothness to look perfect, then a 1920x1080 snapshot should look the same - but if you do a high resolution snapshot, the settings are too weak and will be much subtler, as they scale.

   These two images all have the exact same settings, aside from that the first is higher resolution (3840 x 2160)

   Look at the keys to see the difference (focal point is on the lampshade).

[NiranV Dean]

Explanation:
The way most (if not all) shaders are set up is that their math does include the screen resolution (they have to) but they do not alter the input parameters according to your input resolution.

If you input depth of field settings that will get you a nice 100 pixel wide circle blur, it will stay exactly 100 pixel at all times irregardless of your resolution, think of it this way, you set ABSOLUTE values that are not affected by anything else, what you input is what the Viewer will output. This means your settings are always specifically tailored to the Viewer's window resolution (because that is what you use to "preview" your settings under normal circumstances right?). If you change the snapshot resolution you will have to scale up specific settings (size based ones) to roughly match the time your desired resolution is bigger than your current preview method's resolution (screen resolution).

To give an example:

Shadow blur on 1.0 will look fitting for 1920x1080, but because shadow blur does not scale with resolution it will blur the same amount on a resolution higher or lower than that, lets say 3840x2160 (4K), this will result in the shadow blur being roughly only "half" as wide on the final high resolution image compared to what you see on your actual window resolution you used to finetune your settings with, the "solution" is quite simple and as others said you will simply have to scale shadow blur up, for the sake of simplicity we'd set it to 2.0 (because we want a blur that is twice as big now), personally i'd recommend adding 20-40% on top, 2.2 to 2.4 might actually look better and closer to what you want. Again as others said you will need to use the snapshot preview to tune your settings (BD has a big preview button to scale the preview across the entire screen) and has an automated scaling option on top of that which should roughly scale up most important values depending on the desired snapshot resolution compared to your original window resolution. It's not perfect but its helpful, i prefer doing it manually.