Blender Camera DoF not updated and camera blur not working

[fbrunell]

SETUP :
- Indigo Renderer v2.2.12, Windows 64-bit Release build
- Blendigo v2.2.11 -d :: Indigo exporter module
- Blender 2.49b 64bit version
- Windows 7.0 Ultimate 64bit version

PROBLEM 1 :
I have built a scene, added a camera, set the DoF focus on the camera, told Blendigo to use Blender Camera. When I render the scene, Indigo tells me that I cannot have o focus distance of 0.00. Why doesn't Blendigo update Focal distance based on Blender Dof Ob???

PROBLEM 2 :
Even when changing Film ISO, Exposure and F-Stop, I can't seem to be able to get any kind of camera motion blur???

SCREEN SHOT :
Following screen shot illustrate :
- Blender Camera setting
- Selected Def object
- Blendigo Camera setting (with 0.00m Focus distance???)

BlenderCameraSetup.jpg (240.01 KiB) Viewed 5559 times

Thanks in advance,

[fbrunell]

I had to render the scene so I clicked autofocus to render the scene but the focal distance did not update in blendigo. It stayed on 0.00. It did not get updated automatically? Could this be part of the problem?

[dougal2]

I had to render the scene so I clicked autofocus to render the scene but the focal distance did not update in blendigo. It stayed on 0.00. It did not get updated automatically? Could this be part of the problem?

No, the autofocus is calculated inside Indigo at render time and is not passed back to Blendigo. There is no mechanism for doing so.

I notice in your Blender screenshot you have the camers DofDist set to 0.00 - that is probably your focus distance problem?
I see that you have the DofOb set, and it seems that Blender should perhaps update its DofDist for Blendigo to read. In any case, if you select your camera target and use the 'Selected' button in Blendigo, it should update the focus distance manually (bear in mind that the distance will probably be set to the centre of the object, not the nearest face!!).

Motion blur is sensitive mostly to the exposure setting - the exposure value 1/X should be greater than your FPS setting to be able to see any noticable effect. ie. X < 25 (default frames-per-second).

You may then have to adjust the other camera settings to get a correct exposure, or use the reinhard adative tonemapper.

[dougal2]

This does look like a retarded bug in blender. If you set a Dof Ob, the DofDist does not get updated, despite the 3D view showing where the focus point is:

[dougal2]

If you select your Dof Ob, and press the 'Selected' button, Blendigo does correctly calculate the focus distance:

[fbrunell]

Thanks for you quick response Dougal.

I indeed tried the Selected which worked perfectly for single render frames but it does not work when using "Render amination". It seems indeed that Blender does not update the "Dof Dist" value when using "Dof Ob". They don't seem to be locked on to another. It would be nice to have an option that does the same thing as Selected but instead of being a one time, would get updated on every frame when user "Render Anim"!

[dougal2]

Yup, I can see that it won't work for animation at the minute. I guess the only solution is to re-implement the DofOb feature in Blendigo so that it works properly. I'll put that on the TODO list.

[dougal2]

In the next release 2.3.3 I have tidied up the focusing options:
1. if auto focus is enabled, other settings are hidden
2. focus distance is linked to blender's dofDist

Unfortunately, the Blender API does not allow me to detect blender's DofObj setting, so I cannot implement it in Blendigo at this time. The consequences of this are that if DofObj is in use, DofDist is not updated, and changing the focus distance in animations is not fully supported.

EDIT: it should be noted that you can animate the focus distance using the appropriate camera IPO curve.

[Borgleader]

I guess an alternate method could be to use an empty as the DofObj?
http://www.blenderguru.com/creating-depth-of-field/
(see here)

If one wants to animate it I guess you could export the empty's distance for each frame in the animation? (I'm speaking out of my ass here as I have absolutely no idea how you export stuff but just a thought)

[dougal2]

It doesn't matter what you set as the DofObj, Blendigo cannot read that information from Blender.