Camera Clipping: simple HOWTO

[FooZe]

This is another simple howto for another new feature - camera clipping (from beta 3.03 onward).

This allows for more flexible positioning of the camera and therefore more creativity and scope for interesting camera shots.

The main purpose was for interior scenes where you want to get a good shot of the whole room but you cannot do so without a very large FOV, because you need to keep the camera inside the room.
Now with camera clipping (near plane), you can position the camera outside the room - lower the FOV and increase the clipping plane distance in front of you until the closest walls are clipped out.

Example:

Notice that the camera position is outside the room geometry (which is clipped away) but you can still see the geometry in the mirror.
The geometry is not altered, only the clipping of the camera.


The below is about as good as it gets without camera clipping if you want to see the same content (left to right).
This is obviously terrible...
(you end up getting things in frame you really don't want such as gaps to sky etc)

The camera clipping setting is in the camera parameters and is called nearClipDepth and is in octane meters from the current camera position.

[emihich]

looked for the feature and didn't find camera clipping.
It is because I am using version 1.0/2.58e Beta (official ?) .
Which one nowadays is the recommended version ?
Shall I move to other version, if any which supports c.clipping ?Is there a link ?
can someone advise me ?
I need camera clipping as I am rendering a Glass House !

[FooZe]

Hi Emihich,

This is in 3.03 test.
http://render.otoy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=24074

Just create a new folder for 3.03 and use the zip file. This way you can always run the older version if you need to.
There have been many changes since 2.58e including the way materials will look (better color representation and changes to the BRDF model), so you may want to still use 2.58e for old projects.

Cheers
Chris.

[mykola1985]

just a question.
Can I use this feature in 3ds max octane plugin?
does it exclude all the geometry outside the camera from calculations before the rendering screen appears (the processing geomety CPU calc. I mean)?

[abstrax]

just a question.
Can I use this feature in 3ds max octane plugin?
does it exclude all the geometry outside the camera from calculations before the rendering screen appears (the processing geomety CPU calc. I mean)?

No, the camera clipping is just doing what it is named for: It hides geometry from the camera, but indirect effects (like their shadow) are still there. This features is to avoid extreme wide angle renderings of interiors, since it allows you to place the camera outside of the room and to look "through" the wall.

Cheers,
Marcus

[jhony]

There have been many changes since 2.58e including the way materials will look (better color representation and changes to the BRDF model), so you may want to still use 2.58e for old projects.