What's wrong with my depth of field? (maya)

[RaeTracer]

Hi,

I'm having a weird problem with my depth of field in maya. I rendered out the image below with and without depth of field, just to show the difference. The problem is, in the top image the circles are crisp and white, which I like, but the bottoms of the tubes are too distinct. With DOF on, the circles get blotchy and dark. The focus distance should be okay - the words are in focus, and they're on the same plane as the circles. So why are they blotchy? I don't understand!!

Thanks,
rAe

[lockdown2000]

well..why dont you DOF the bacteria etc itself.
then make the rings, delete the other stuff, render without DOF on BLACK!
then in photoshop or whatever, just screen the rings onto the cylinders and stuff.

Or you could just DOF everthing minus text and rings just add those in photoshop.
that seems the easiest to me...

[RaeTracer]

Thanks, I might end up doing that. But it is part of an animation - camera pans across all the tops as the rings circle the tubes, then the Eukarya pulls up in front of everything. I animated the DOF to follow the Eukarya, so the other rings blur out in the bgd and I'm not sure if i can duplicate the effect in After Effects.

Does that make any sense? It's kind of hard to explain.

Anyway, here's a still from later in the animation - shows how the eukarya crosses in front of the others.

[insect]

well I'm no Maya specialist, but it looks a bit similar to the effect that's caused by the dof after effect when renderng in max. It uses a depth map to calculate the blur and has troubles with edges that are next to highly blurred pixels. When rendering dof in passes (when the camera is slightly moved at every pass/render) this doesn't occure... So if Maya has such feature, you should try it instead, even that it means rendering one frame 12 or more times...

Not much help I guess. :o

One more thing. Perhaps there is some "smoothing" setting for the dof (for this one. the after effect) ? It might be too high - it affects pixels which shouldn't be affected. Yet it remains only a guess, cause I have no experience in Maya. :roll:

[lockdown2000]

well thats still easy
have AE or Priemere? this is simple. Again do what I said
one shot with dof on the background and then lock the camera, and stuff. add the rings delete everything, and remove dof. Then make sure to render on PURE black, so not lights or anything, and then animate the camera motion with the rings, and do the same with the letters. go into AE or priemere and screen both the rings and letter on! BOOM! now you have the animation with DOF the rings and text all follow.

[mannix]

It might be your Depth Scaling...or the Fstop, I would play with both of These Options. I have used DOF alot and its really all in adjusting those 2 values...

[RaeTracer]

Thanks guys, I'll see if i can get something to work a little better!