Scott DeWoody

Z-Depth (aka Fog Pass), is a render element out of your 3D-Package that can be used in Post Production to simulate Depth of Field (DoF). In Photoshop, you add it to the Channels layer, and apply it to the the image via the Lens Blur Filter. It is a grey scaled image, pending on the value you set, will blur the image accordingly.

In your 3D-Package, your normally set a minimum range, and a maximum range.

• Everything set between your camera and the minimum range will be white.
• Everything between your minimum and maximum range will be grey scale.
• Everything after your maximum range will be black.

While doing test renders, it’s best to set these numbers up to a range that you find that could be the best to be used in Post. Now this tutorial will show you what to do incase you render your final image a high resolution, and your z-depth isn’t up to snuff. Normally you would have to re-render. But with this tip, you won’t! All you need is any Post-Production software that supports 32-bit. Since I normally use Photoshop, we’re going to go with that. And since Photoshop doesn’t take multi-layered EXR files, I’m going to be saving the Z-Depth pass as it’s own EXR.

If you aren’t familiar with .EXR files, I suggest you get on that! There’s nothing better in the end. They tend to be large files, and can take up space on your HDD very quickly. The reason being, is that they are true 32-Bit images. So this pretty much means almost every color, and light intensity is stored in every pixel! I’ll have to explain more on this later. Off to the Z-Depth!

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So I promise I’m going to get some 3D content this week! I know! I’ve been promising it for a while, and work finally seems like it’s going to be a little slow for once this month. I know I’ve been saying that for a while now, but I think it’s finally true.

Anyways… to business! So I’ve recently purchased a Nikon D7000 and have been a little trigger happy with it. So I’ve uploaded some new shots taken with it to the Flickr page. I’ve also been following two photographers for a while now, and I thought I’d share their portfolio’s with you.

The first Photographer is Lisa Bettany (aka MostlyLisa). You can find her work at www.mostlylisa.com, and she also as a pod/video-cast up at http://twit.tv/photo. Her work is absolutely amazing, and she also give a lot of good tips on her blog. So give her a look!

The second Photographer is Trey Ratcliff. You can view his work here: www.stuckincustoms.com. He specializes in HDR Photography. And I haven’t seen anyone else come even close to this level. His images are just breathtaking. And the cool thing is, his site is just full of tips and techniques on how he does his images in post-production. Not only that, he’s about to start up a 3 week, 9-class, webinar that goes over his whole workflow from start to finish! I’ve already signed up for it, so I’ll report back later on how it goes!

And now here’s a teaser for the Flickr Page!

Ok! Still with me? So now for some 3D tips! I’m going to be creating a more detailed blog post for all this tomorrow. But incase I don’t get to it, here it is in text form at least.

So the best way I’ve found to render out a Z-depth pass is to render it as a 32-bit EXR. Why not just a jpeg or tga you say? If you save out your Zdepth pass as a 32-bit image, that is unclamped (and that is KEY), you’ll be able to change your min and maximum distance in Photoshop with the exposure control! Hard to imagine, but you won’t have to re-render the Z-Depth pass at all! If it didn’t come out exactly like you wanted it to, that’s ok. Just open up the exposure control in Photoshop and play with the Exposure, Offset and Gamma. Each slider does something a little different, so you’ll have to play around to get the effect you are looking for. Once you do that, just copy the Z-depth pass to your PSD’s Alpha channel, and apply the Lens Blur filter like normal.

Now I’m not familiar with Mental Ray too much. But when you add the Z-Depth pass in V-Ray, you have to uncheck “clamp z-depth”. If you don’t the exposure command won’t work like it should. Also, when you save out the Z-depth, you’ll want to make sure you set the “TYPE” from “RGBA” to “RGB” (only if you plan on going into Photoshop). Doing this won’t save the alpha channel with the Z-Depth pass. You will have holes in your image if you do this, and it is a pain to clean up and to get right.

Again, I’m going to write up some steps with some images later to better explain myself. Though if you have any questions, feel free to email myself!

-Scott

It’s been a while since the last update, but work has been keeping my super busy. But I have found the time on the side to do a free lance project. My client was Carol Barden & Company along with Olson Kundig Architects. This is Wabi Sabi Two, and it is located here at 1916 Bank Street, Houston, Texas. It is currently under construction. The first image is the final render, and the second image is me just having a little bit of fun with colors in Photoshop. Enjoy!

1916 Bankd Street View 1

So I wanted to wait to make sure everything was in place, and I’m glad I did. I’m please to announced that my Rizzozo’s and Valentino’s images were chosen to be included in 3DATS’s new compilation book known as ‘ispirato’. This book is an amazing collection of visualization work from around the world from only a handful of artists.

But just a few days ago, I was told I had to be cut from Volume One due to some issues with printing. But I was assured I would be in Volume Two! Which is still a great honor, so I wanted to thank 3DATS for giving me the opportunity to be included in this collection. The really have put their hearts and souls into making this book, and you can see it in the final product. And if you are interested in getting a copy of the first volume, you can find it here. But there are only 750 copies available to the public, so you better grab one while you can!

-Scott

Here is an image that started just as a little side project of trying out different lighting techniques in V-Ray. I started by just playing around with lights and colors, and evolved to what you see here. The building is a base mesh taken from the Evermotion 17 library. I’ve altered it some, and then gave it a local.

My goal was to achieve an almost night shot, where the lights of the building would help carve the building’s shape out of the night sky. I then decided to put part of it on water to have those lights reflected back into the scene. I chose to design a restaurant because I figured that would be the best setting to play around with some nice lighting, other than a house. This was made in 3ds Max 2010 with Vray 1.5. There was a lot of work done in post with Photoshop. Such as controlling the colors, reflection intensities, the stars, and building the city in the background. I hope you enjoy!

Right Click > View Image to see a larger version.