Controlling Depth of Field (DoF) in Maya - By the Book |
If you have searched through the Maya documentation on depth of field you most likely came across a page which recommends using the heads up display and manually entering in the DoF. If not I will talk about it briefly. In the image below we want the camera's DoF to focused on the center Suzanne.
Open the AE (Attribute Editor) for the camera and under its shape node locate the 'Depth of Field' controls and tick the 'Depth of Field' check box.
When you take a test render the entire image is blurred.
This is because the focus distance is incorrect. According to the Maya docs you should turn on the HUD display for object details.
Display > Heads Up Display > Object Details
This creates a HUD in the upper right hand corner of the viewport. While looking through the render camera select the center Suzanne.
The HUD will update with information about the selected object, including the distance of the selected object from the camera (11.396).
In the camera AE enter this value in the focus distance and take another render.
Now the center Suzanne is in focus. However there are always other ways to do this. Imagine if you have to use DoF on a moving object? This method would become unusable so let's look at another solution.
