DAZ Studio. Camera Control. Quick Tutorial

Transcription

1 DAZ Studio Camera Control Quick Tutorial By: Thyranq June, 2011

2 Hi there, and welcome to a quick little tutorial that should help you out with setting up your cameras and camera parameters in DAZ Studio. Please note that I'm using DAZ Studio 3, but this can be followed in DAZ Studio 4 as well. I'm not sure, however, about DAZ Studio versions earlier than DS3. The first thing we're going to cover is Focal Distance, which is the simplest and easiest of the camera parameters. Focal Distance is simply the distance from the camera to the object of focus. This can be calculated using a whole bunch of algorithms, or we can do it the easy way and use the viewport to see where our focal point (think of Focal Distance as Focal Point instead it'll make more sense) is. You cannot see some camera's visual representations, such as the Depth of Field planes, when viewing from the camera that you're adjusting you must switch either to another camera, or to the perspective view. I'll be using the perspective view. Select your camera either buy double clicking it in the viewport, or by clicking on it in the scene tab. You'll see this on your camera:

3 See that little green line right in front of the sphere (green and red, actually it's like a crosshair. There's also a blue line that travels through the whole thing)? That's where your Focal Distance is set. (This may be 'inside' your character, or anything else in the scene, and you may need to increase or decrease the 'focal distance' in order to bring it into view do this simply by entering a new 'focal distance' value with your keyboard, or dragging the 'focal distance' dial to the left or right). This is visible even with Depth of Field set to off. Ever notice how sometimes when you're trying to rotate around say a figure's head, and your camera, or perspective view is rotating WAY too much, or too little, around the head? This is because of where the focal distance is set.

4 When dealing with Depth of Field this is important because where that green line is, is where the focus of your image is going to be oriented. Let's turn on Depth of Field so we can better understand, and bring the other parameters into this tutorial. Notice how we now see two planes around our crosshair? Those are the Depth of Field (DoF) planes. Everything inside of those two planes will be in focus, and what's outside of them will become progressively more out of focus, depending on how far outside of the planes it is. Now, if we increase the focal distance so that our crosshair is just in front of the vertical plane, you'll notice that the distance between the two DoF planes will get slightly bigger.

5 The larger the value in your focal distance parameter, the larger the distance between your foreground and background DoF panes. Likewise, the lower the value of your focal distance, the smaller the space between the panes. Now lets talk about Focal Length, which is also on the camera's parameters tab. Focal length can be thought of like 'zoom'. If we view through our camera with the default setting of 65mm focal length, we see this:

6 Now, if we change the focal length to 35mm we'll get something completely different. The camera hasn't moved at all, but the lens is much wider, and will 'see' much more of the scene, but will have a 'fishbowl' bending effect on some objects that are close to it (which is not so noticeable in this particular example, as the sphere is not overly close to the camera)

7 Let's look through our perspective view again.

8 Notice how much larger the distance between the DoF panes has become? Because the lens is viewing a MUCH wider area, the DoF panes will also open up. Note that I have not changed the f/stop (which will directly control the distance between the two panes), only the focal length. This type of lens is great for rendering large areas and landscapes, but can be a little tricky with DoF, as the distance between your two panes becomes very large, and very sensitive to change in the f/stop value. Likewise, if we change the camera to a more 'character' friendly focal length of 125mm, and view through the camera again:

9 The focal length now sees much less of the scene, but removes any fishbowl effect. This setting, 125mm focal length, is what I use when rendering most of my characters or scenes. Unless the scene is huge, or I'm rendering more for the setting than the character, 125mm is what I go with I find it works great for characters and portraits. And now looking through the perspective view, we can see that, like when we lowered the focal length, the DoF panes have adjusted as well. They are MUCH narrower now:

10 That's focal length and focal distance discussed now let's move on to the real meat of the camera controls the f/stop. This is the parameter that actively changes the distance between the two DoF panes, and determines how much or how little of your scene is in focus, relative to the position of the focal point (focal distance). Let's set our focal point so that it's just in front of the sphere, and set our camera back to 65mm focal length.

11 The actual effect of the DoF won't be visible until we render, so we're going to view through our camera again, and render the scene with the f/stop at the default value of 22.

12 Notice how the background is slightly blurred, but the sphere is in focus? That's your Depth of Field at work. It's also worth noting that while our DoF panes don't have the whole sphere between them, the visible regions of the sphere are, for the most part, entirely in-focus, as the 'falloff' for the focus will keep some of the image outside of the panes IN focus, until it falls off enough to be visibly noticeable. Let's now change the f/stop to a lower value (which will bring your panes closer together, having less of your image in focus) of 8, and render again.

13 Now we see that the background is blurred out quite a bit, and the sphere is also blurring on it's sides. Likewise we can increase the f/stop to put more of the image in focus. Let's set it at 64 and render again.

14 It might not be overly noticeable in the size of the images in this document, but when comparing the 22 f/stop to this 64 one, the background is in focus quite a bit more, and the entire sphere is in focus. All of this has different uses. Depth of Field is used to bring reality into your renders, as well as emphasize certain parts of your images. The human eye will be drawn to what's in focus first, so it's a great way to really bring attention to a particular object, figure, or prop in your images. It can be a little tricky to get these settings down path practice with them and you will grasp it quite quickly. There are several f/stops that I use commonly in my own images, so you can use those for your starting points. Those values are: 8, 16, 22, 34, 48, 64, 96, and will give you a very narrow field of focus, while 120 will keep some detail on just about everything in your scene, provided the background isn't REALLY far out. Just remember this when setting up your focal point - think of what you want the focus of the image to be on, and set it there for example, in a portrait render, the focus would normally be on the eye of the

15 character, so set your focal point to be just in front of the character's eye. If you have something in the background that you'd like captured, but you want the character in front to be the real focus, use a higher f/stop value (64 and up usually works for me, but may be too much for some renders) that will keep some detail in the background, while still putting emphasis on your character in the foreground. Remember also that if you're rendering a large scene, it would be, in many cases, better to use a lower focal length (such as 35mm) but remember also that doing that will open up your DoF panes, and if you're focusing on something that is far away from your camera, the panes will open up even more, which will require extremely low values of f/stop to achieve blurring. A recent image I rendered using a large scene with the focal point in the centre of it, and the focal length set at 35mm required me to use an f/stop value of 0.2 in order to achieve some blurring in both the foreground and background. Lower focal length values plus high focal distance values will make your DoF panes VERY sensitive. Likewise, high focal length values, and lower focal distance values will make them move VERY slowly if you're dialing the f/stop on the parameters tab, and it may look like your entire image will be out of focus but do some test renders, as the panes are not always visually accurate as to what is in, and out of, focus. I would suggest setting up your camera settings before adding lights to your scene. Set up your focal length before moving your camera at all, as setting it up after you've positioned it will require repositioning. Find a nice spot to render from once you've set up your focal length, then set up your focal distance, and do test renders (which will be nice and quick without any lights) to determine how much or how little of an f/stop value will work for your image. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions, please feel free to me. I can be reached at: military_mastermind@hotmail.com