Indigo implements a physically-based camera model which automatically simulates real-world phenomena such as depth of field (often abbreviated as DoF), vignetting and aperture diffraction.

This is a crucial component for Indigo's "virtual photography" paradigm, as it allows the user to use familiar settings from their camera in producing realistic renderings of their 3D scenes.

Aperture radius

Defines the radius of the camera aperture.

A smaller aperture radius corresponds to a higher f-number. For more information on this relationship please see the excellent Wikipedia page on f-numbers.

Focus distance

The distance in front of the camera at which objects will be in focus.

Aspect ratio

Should be set to the image width divided by the image height.

Sensor width

Width of the sensor element of the camera. A reasonable default is 0.036 (36mm). Determines the field of view (often abbreviated as FoV), together with the lens sensor distance.

Lens sensor distance

Distance from the camera sensor to the camera lens. A reasonable default is 0.02 (20mm).

White balance

Sets the white balance of the camera. See White Balance.

Exposure duration

Sets the duration for which the camera's aperture is open. The longer the exposure duration, the brighter the image registered by the sensor.

Autofocus

When this option is enabled Indigo will perform an autofocus adjustment before rendering, automatically adjusting the focal distance based on the distance of objects in front of the camera.

Obstacle map

An obstacle map texture is used when calculating the diffraction though the camera aperture, to change the way the aperture diffraction appears.

Aperture shape

This allows a particular shape of camera aperture to be specified.

The allowable shapes are "circular", "generated" or "image". A preview of the final aperture shape will be saved in Indigo's working directory as "aperture_preview.png". An image aperture shape must be in PNG format and square with power-of-two dimensions of at least 512 x 512. The image is interpreted as a grey-scale image with the white portions being transparent and black being solid.

For further information and example images please see the aperture diffraction sub-section.