- RAY TRACING: SPEEDING UP THINGS (OBJECTS)
- RAY TRACING: SPEEDING UP THINGS (GLOBALS)
- RAYTRACING: INDEX OF REFRACTION (IOR)
- RENDERING: FILTERS FOR STILL IMAGES VERSUS VIDEO
- RENDERING VIDEO: RENDER FRAMES, NOT FIELDS
- RENDERING VIDEO: MAKE SURE VIDEO COLOR CHECK IS ON
- RENDERING VIDEO: CHECK YOUR GAMMA!
- RENDERING GREAT BIG, GIANT, HONKING, ENORMOUS IMAGES SUCCESSFULLY
- DON'T RENDER MOVIES—RENDER FRAMES!
- SPEAKING OF THE RAM PLAYER...
- RERENDERING FROM THE ENVIRONMENT BACKGROUND
- OKAY, SO YOU REALLY WANT TO RERENDER YOUR ANIMATION...
- IFL = IMAGE FILE LIST
- YOU CAN'T CREATE .IFL FILES ON READ-ONLY MEDIA!
- MANIPULATING IMAGE SEQUENCES USING .IFLS
- CREATE NESTED .IFL FILES
- A CHICKEN AND EGG PROBLEM: HOW DO YOU SET UP AN ANIMATED BACKGROUND FOR A SCENE IF YOU HAVEN'T RENDERED THE BACKGROUND YET?
- COULD YOU MAKE THINGS MORE COMPLICATED, PLEASE? (WHAT ABOUT USING A COMPOSITING PROGRAM?)
- COMPOSITING USING VIDEO POST
- RENDERING WITH SCANLINE MOTION BLUR: MULTI-PASS AND IMAGE
- RENDERING WITH SCANLINE: MIX IMAGE AND MULTI-PASS MOTION BLUR
- RENDERING IMAGES FOR PRINT: TEACH THOSE PRINT FOLKS A LESSON (OR TWO...)
- RENDERING IMAGES FOR PRINT: OH YEAH, ANOTHER THING...
- "THOSE PRINT PEOPLE"—MAKE IT EASIER ON THEM WITH 3DS MAX 6
- THE PRINT SIZE WIZARD (ENOUGH WITH THE PRINTING STUFF ALREADY!)
- MENTAL RAY IS IN THE BUILDING!
- MENTAL RAY IS ON THE COUCH!
- USE MENTAL RAY'S IMAGE SAMPLING WISELY
- IN MENTAL RAY, CONTRAST CAN SAVE YOUR DAY!
- HIDDEN LINE RENDERING: RENDER TO VECTORS IN MENTAL RAY
- TRIM YOUR (BSP) TREE IN MENTAL RAY
- MENTAL RAY PREFERENCES: PLEASE LEAVE ME A MESSAGE
- RENDERING AESTHETICS: OUTER SPACE SCENES
- RENDERING AESTHETICS: UNDERWATER SCENES
- RENDERING AESTHETICS: DISTANT LANDSCAPES
- RENDERING AESTHETICS: STILL LIFE AND MACROPHOTOGRAPHY
- "HELLO... YOU'VE GOT RENDER!"
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
RENDERING AESTHETICS: STILL LIFE AND MACROPHOTOGRAPHY
The smaller the scale of your scene, the more you should use a shallow depth of field (DOF). In real-world photography, a tiny camera tends to have a correspondingly small ability to capture "distant" objects in a scene—and if you're simulating microphotography, "distant" might be only a fraction of an inch away. The more objects in your scene go in and out of focus relative to their nearness/distance to the camera, the smaller the scene will look. (If you use shallow depth of field in a room interior, it will resemble a dollhouse shot with a snorkel camera.)
Both the 3ds max scanline renderer (through the Camera Depth of Field Parameters rollout) and the 3ds max 6 mental ray renderer offer DOF options; use them carefully when you're rendering your scene, especially because this is a computationally intensive effect. (Also, be forewarned: If you combine depth of field effects with atmospheric effects, raytracing, or global illumination and caustics in mental ray, your render times will go through the roof.)
Note that if you do have a compositing program, such as Discreet's Combustion, you're probably better off rendering your scene to different render layers, and then adding animated Blurring effects (to simulate DOF) as a post-process. (That's how the cinematic special effects experts do it, so you should, too!)
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