OTOY Forums

Any thoughts on being able to dampen the focus racking on the Octane camera tags autofocus?
Can anyone think of a way of recreating this effect in xpresso so some dampening could be manually applied to the focus distance?


Thanks!

Z

Turn off autofocus in the Octane Camera tag.

Use a null in the Focus Object of the normal Cinema4D camera controls.

I left out some information. I love the autofocus feature of Octane and was hoping to replicate it with dampening. I am trying not to key frame anything and the autofocus is perfect except that it snaps focus too fast.

Z

it's not possible because it's a renderer and have one frame data each time. You should simulate it by some xpresso or key frames.

Ya I figured it was not possible with the Octane autofocus. For anyone savvy out there with xpresso, any pointers on how to measure a distance from an object (the camera) to any object that passes into the "z" vector (center of the FOV of the camera)? I get how to get distance between 2 objects but they must both be defined. Thanks everyone for the responses.

Z

You can get the distance via the xpresso distance node
I did a small example scene but somehow it does not work currently, maybe I have overlooked something, because I know I did it that way before and it worked. Although you only need it for the Octane Camera Tag I guess. I am on 3.03.2-R4 BTW

Thanks for the response. I know how to to get distances between two defined objects. What I am trying to figure out is how to reproduce an "autofocus" which does not need a defined "target" like the standard Xpresso distance node requires.
I am looking to make a range finder that will tell the distance of any object that comes in line with the Z vector of the camera. Thanks.

Ah sorry, my bad I overread that part with the "object crossing the Z vector of the camera"

Sorry to necro this post. But did you ever find a solution in xpresso for this? I'm trying to do the exact same thing now.

I was thinking, "Why not bake the auto focus then apply a simplify and smooth function to the resulting curve?" Then I looked and realized that the Focal Depth attribute is not only inaccessible when Auto Focus is on, its current, Octane driven value isn't even available to Xpresso. It would be nice if the Octane passed the Focal Depth data back to the host app for further reference or manipulation.