Looking for a good guide or help

Hi guys,

I'm not good with DAZ/Poser, but I try to get better. However, I sometimes have a hard time understand, or even FINDING a good guide or help faq when looking for help on learning how to do something.

Such it is with cameras in DAZ studio pro.

I can't seem to get mine to work, at all. I've used several tutorials, but either I'm retarded, or something is wrong with my program, because no matter what, I can't get focus to work at all. Any 'focus' work that is in my stuff I've done by hand with the blur tool in photoshop and it's annoying. I want to have it work in renders

So... if anyone has a good tutorial/guide I'd love your help. Thank you in advance!

Laschae 14 years ago
http://greywulf.net/2010/02/easy-depth-of-field-in-daz-studio-3/ Maybe ? I dunno jack about DS tho. ><
Eve 14 years ago
I don't even bother doing DoF in Poser, so I'd be clueless how it works in Daz. I render a z-depth layer and use that in an alpha channel to do Lens Blur in PS. Lot easier to render and gives you greater control. Plus I never liked the way DoF looked in Poser anyway, almost like it does hatch marks or something. Not sure if Daz has a way to do a depth render or if you need some plug-in for it, but it's something to look into.
KaAnna 14 years ago
It's weird. Sometimes I can't get it to do it either and I know relatively how.

Select the camera you want to use DoF with. Go down to the options and turn Depth of Field on (options go as such: Perspective.. Focal Length.. Depth of Field).

Create a new camera or use another camera. Move it so that you can see your main camera. Make sure your main camera is selected. Now you should see three red squares coming out of your camera. The two middle/front ones are the ones you want to worry about. In between these two squares are what's in focus, anything outside of them (supposedly) is out of focus.

Now, to move these two planes, you use the Focal Distance and the F/Stop options right underneath the Depth of Field option. I THINK that the Focal Distance moves the planes in and out and the F/Stop widens/shortens the distance between the two squares.

Even with all this information, I still sometimes can't get it to work and I have no idea why. If you have any other questions feel free to ask, I'll try my best to answer.
Laschae 14 years ago
what the fuckity fuck is this z-depth you speak of woman?! Team to me your sekrits!
Lessa 14 years ago
I love DoF in Daz, its really easy once you figure it out, and quick.

I would have to open it up to see, but I imagine my description would be about like KaAnna's, she knows her stuff
KaAnna 14 years ago
Laschae;104193
what the fuckity fuck is this z-depth you speak of woman?! Team to me your sekrits!


http://lantios.deviantart.com/art/Z-Depth-Mask-Tutorial-in-DS3A-170794440 -- Best tutorial for it (using DS), not sure about Poser.
ROzbeans 14 years ago
DOF in DS is ridiculously complicated. In poser, with some of the addons or just straight from the render settings, it's super easy. =/
Kilandra 14 years ago
AH! Thank you! So I was not completely stupid in this regard, and was doing most of it correclty, it just ... doesn't like to work all the time apparently. I am really not technologically art saavy, so all these things that people talk about I usually have no idea what they mean and am too shy to ask. So, I really really appreciate the link to the tutorial on the depth. maybe it will make my manual attempts to get things looking right easier.
KaAnna 14 years ago
I'm not sure why the heck it doesn't work all the time either X_X it's really frustrating. And I find the Z-Depth mask frustrating sometimes too (in the Photoshop part, the actual creation of a Z-Depth mask is easy). It could be because of my mistakes in creating it, not sure.
Eve 14 years ago
I use a lot of scripts from Semideu over on DNA, Las, so you should be familiar with his stuff I love his library one for the new Poser, but my fav is Advanced Render. I just tell check the z-depth box, then tell it which actor I want to be the minimal distance, and then what I want to be farthest away and it spits out the mask. I have noticed a z-depth box in render settings now in PP2010, so it might do it natively there now, too. Once you have that, you put it in your alpha channels (the tab next to your layers). Sometimes I do the Lens Blur as one of the first steps, so I don't mess with something that's just going to get blurred anyway, but usually I save it for one of the last things I do. In the Lens Blur screen, you pick which alpha you want to use, click invert, and then adjust the focus settings to your needs. Vex turned me on to that script when it came out and I couldn't live without it now. I do separate layers for normal, shadows, ao, and usually the z-depth and sometimes even another alpha for some materials if I want to adjust something in post. That comes in handy if you have say a bunch of gems or anything else you might want to make glowy. Select that alpha mask, make a new layer, fill with the color for your glow, and then blur that layer and fiddle with layer settings for screen or dodge and voila, glowy bits
Adiene 14 years ago
hehe I am a big weird-o and never use PoF in poser or Daz =/ Poser always looks so grainy to me anyways .. Interesting stuffs/links tho I will have to go try out new stuffs too