mtpeak2

Pretty cool Robert. I'm guessing the geometry is circular, then posed to the tank tread shape?

Thanks Michel. I guess you're the only one who likes the new render. I made some changes to the set textures, hopefully for the better. I changed the hair image for the foreground pine, retextured the rocks and repositioned the foliage hair to cover the harsh line of the closest rock to the ground. I'll post the new renders when they finish, it's going to take awhile.

Just playing around some more.

Thanks guys. A:M has a blur post effect, I wonder if it could be modified to use a grayscale/depth map for the DOF.

I have the effector setup in a model, translating it to an object sets the focus distance and scaling it basicly sets the near and far focus.

Here I translated and oriented the effector like the camera, bringing the focal point to the foreground.

No tuts, just an idea I had after reading about using fog.

Looks good so far. Nice job everyone.

I'm rendering the map in A:M, but applying it in post.

I can't seem to find the blur map plugin, can you give me a little help? Never mind I found it.

Here's my test renders with the depth map on the landscape scene. I'll have to test the null shader Josh, thanks.

I made some adjustments and rerender the depth map. I'm using a spherical material effector with a double gradient, with black and white attributes with ambiance intensity set to 100%. I remove most of the images and materials from the models (need hair images for the leave and foliage). I place the effector where I want it in focus and aim it at the camera. Remove all the lights and render. Then I use gimp with the focus blur plugin and use it as a depth map on the colored image. Here's the depth map and a new render.

Thanks Robert. The one thing I didn't understand was that you can select the color to be in focus. Glenn, I'm using Gimp with the focus blur plugin, which you can't select the color for focus. I'll have to look at the paint.net. The one issue with using fog is, hair with images. For my landscape scene, I can't remove the images for the leaves and foliage, I would have to covert all of them to white images. So fog is not an option for me. I'll keep experimenting to see if I can come up with an easy reusable solution.

With all the talk about depth maps, I figured I'd give it a try.

Here are 2 images of a before and after, using the above image as a depthmap. The focus is set to the furthest rock.

I'm still not understanding your explanation. How would you keep objects out of focus very close and very far away, with the middle in-focus? Fog will only give you very close focus and gradually going out of focus the further away the objects are from the camera (or the other way around).

If using it for DOF, how would you use it to focus on something in the middle of the scene, leaving the near and far out of focus?

This has been an interesting thread about the depth map. Using fog has its limits though, it will only give you a depth in one direction. I've been experimenting with a different approach. Here's the results.

You could try rendering the heat maps merging separately with no transparency added to the models (with alpha buffer set to ON). Then add it as a layer with the color percentage set lower than 100% for the transparency.

Thanks Steve.

Is this a version of JD that you installed? It looks as though the hip area needs more weighting. Also, I posted an updated JD, with the Face Rig installed, in the rigging section of the forum

Translate to and orient like constraints. As for breaking the constraint, don't animate the back or shoulders to the point of breaking the constraint.

Here's a new version of JD with the update 8 fix AND Face Rig installed. It still need some weighting and rig adjustments, but it's working pretty well. All the controls for the face rig can be rotated on the X and Y axis and some of them can be translated on the X and Y axis (I recommend using the arrow keys to translate them). The face rig is compatible with A:M Tracks exported action files. JD_face.zip

As to your first question, no there isn't a shortcut key, but you can use an action to reposition bones (with the weighting moving the cps accordingly) and export the model. The model will export with the new bone and cp positions. This should work for your second question as well. In an action, just go into muscle mode and move the cps, then export the model. For the third question, I don't think there is a way to add cps with weighting already assigned. [EDIT] Rereading your second question, I'm not really sure what you are asking. Once a cp is weighted, moving it in modeling mode won't change the weighting (same goes for an action). If you are using bone falloff, you can just recalculate the weights.

Looks great Lee. I have an idea on who it is, but I'm sure I'm totally wrong.