Can't Set OctaneRender Aperture to Zero Tweet

[Spectralis]

I can't set the OctaneRender Aperture to zero in DAZ Studio. This means that close objects are slightly out of focus. It almost always defaults to 0.23 even with the slider completely to the left (zero) even with OR F/Stop set to 22. Sometimes if I fiddle about with DS 'Focal Distance' and DS 'F/Stop' then OR Aperture will go to zero but this is completely random and totally unreliable. And yes, I do have the correct camera selected in the DS scene pane and in OR's viewport when changing values!

How do I set OR Aperture to zero? I've tried changing the value to '0' but this often doesn't work either. This is driving me mad! Atm, if I want every thing in a scene to be in focus and I just can't find a way to make this happen reliably. I didn't have this problem before OR plugin v1.2. Please help!

[Spectralis]

It's ok, I've found the solution in his thread:

viewtopic.php?f=44&t=40706&hilit=aperture

It's daft that OR Aperture can't be set to zero without switching off limits in OR F/Stop. How many images I've rendered that are slightly out of focus I shudder to think but I started to notice an annoying softness/blurriness to closer objects and figures in a scene. For example a figure standing 4-6 feet from the camera would be slight out of focus while the background was sharp - no matter how much I tried to adjust the camera settings. Totally maddening when the scene does not require DOF like certain landscape and city scenes.

New users should be alerted to this problem otherwise they might not notice or be able to figure out why their renders are slightly out of focus.

[UruMike]

In case you didn't know, you can get your near object in focus by setting the OctaneRender Focal Distance to your object!

To do so I use a little trick:
Set the DS Camera's Depth of Filed to on. If you now select your camera and look at it from the side with another view you'll see a near and a far DOF plane, and between them a fine red and green cross. (You cannot go by the DOF planes since DS and OR calculate the DOF differently)
Now use the Focal Distance slider to adjust the DS cam's Focal distance to your object.
Then switch off OctaneRender Autofocus.
Type the Focal Distance of the DS cam to the OctaneRender Focal Distance (cm) parameter.
If you render now the area where your red/green cross is will be sharp.

Hope this helps!

[linvanchene]

edited and removed by user

[Spectralis]

I find that the settings don't allow for sharp images. For example, if I want the DOF to be 500m then everything within 500m should be in focus - that's how my cameras work but this is not what I'm experiencing with the plugin when the aperture is 0.23. In fact, figures/objects that are within the DOF are slightly out of focus which does not look natural at all.

We are dealing with a very unnatural medium - very rarely do I see 3D rendered images that look natural and even then I can tell that there is something slightly off about them. Perhaps that is due to years of photography and artwork or just a natural human ability to tell what's real from a simulation. Photography only seems natural because we are now so steeped in its conventions. Flat images are not natural.

I watched 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes' again recently and despite the very good CGI effects I could immediately tell they were not natural. I've not seen a film where I've found the CGI completely believable. And why should the audience or the creators of these works need to completely buy into naturalism? Special effects haven't stopped me from enjoying many films even those made long before digital FX. CGI has a license to look unnatural because no one wants natural. We expect more than real now days and once that tacit agreement was made between the audience and the director decades ago then CGI really took off.

Having said that, while the human eye can discriminate that something is a simulation it is also very forgiving about things like DOF, shadows and other elements of lighting in CGI - often because the brain is only able to process a limited range of visual information at any one time. Visual intelligence is learned not innate and varies depending on what its purpose is for. We encounter many natural and urban environments with very complex lighting depending on the time of day but unless you're a CGI artist I doubt most people are aware of the subtleties of lighting or what a naturalistic DOF might represent since the age of flat screens displaying moving images began.

That's why I think all options should be available and easy to work out not just those that have been established as tradition that were themselves once considered unnatural.

[Spectralis]

In case you didn't know, you can get your near object in focus by setting the OctaneRender Focal Distance to your object!

To do so I use a little trick:
Set the DS Camera's Depth of Filed to on. If you now select your camera and look at it from the side with another view you'll see a near and a far DOF plane, and between them a fine red and green cross. (You cannot go by the DOF planes since DS and OR calculate the DOF differently)
Now use the Focal Distance slider to adjust the DS cam's Focal distance to your object.
Then switch off OctaneRender Autofocus.
Type the Focal Distance of the DS cam to the OctaneRender Focal Distance (cm) parameter.
If you render now the area where your red/green cross is will be sharp.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, I'll give this a try. Being able to calculate the DOF so accurately would be excellent.

[UruMike]

In case you didn't know, you can get your near object in focus by setting the OctaneRender Focal Distance to your object!

To do so I use a little trick:
Set the DS Camera's Depth of Filed to on. If you now select your camera and look at it from the side with another view you'll see a near and a far DOF plane, and between them a fine red and green cross. (You cannot go by the DOF planes since DS and OR calculate the DOF differently)
Now use the Focal Distance slider to adjust the DS cam's Focal distance to your object.
Then switch off OctaneRender Autofocus.
Type the Focal Distance of the DS cam to the OctaneRender Focal Distance (cm) parameter.
If you render now the area where your red/green cross is will be sharp.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, I'll give this a try. Being able to calculate the DOF so accurately would be excellent.

Remeber, as I wrote, the DOF planes of the DS camera don't represent the real Depth of Field of Octane Render. DS calculates it different than OCDS.

Having read your last post I remembered I had a similiar issue once:
Everything I rendered was slightly blurry, like it would be out of focus, but it was not.
Reading these forums I found the following:
There are two Octane parameters, or better their OCDS default settings, blurring your image, just a little bit, but enough to be visible.
Try to decrease the Filtersize parameter in the Kernel settings, I use 1, and set the Noise Reduction to 1. Noise reduction blurs the image. A value of 1 switches it off.
See if that increases the sharpness of your pics!