Requires:
- Maya 5.x 7.0
- SOFTIMAGE|XSI 5.0
- Mental Ray 3.4
- WinNT/2000/XP/ME
Key Benefits
Depth-of-Field accounts for photo-realism. It is the feature of the real-world optics, and must be approached as serious as lighting, modeling or texturing. It is also the key element in photographic composition. Together with other camera settings, X-DOF is a powerful expression tool, that helps you better define the foreground and background. It is the key to achieving great composition and beatiful images.
Especially in CG, the DOF effect can save you a lot of work. Instead of modeling and texturing everything carefully, you will just put all effort into important areas - objects in focus. As a result, you will get cooler pictures in shorter time!
Feature Highlights
- Smooth, fast and accurate Depth-of-Field effect
- Custom lens diaphragms
- Custom intensity features
- Advanced motion blur
Beauty, Speed, and Accuracy
All of it can work at the same time! The other DOF solutions either lack accuracy - the case of post-filters, or take hours to render, as it happens with all raytraced DOFs.
Custom Lens Diaphragms
The lens aperture of a real camera consists of a number of blades which add up for an opening through which the light hits the film. X-Dof allows to simulate the diaphragms with 3,4,5,6,8,10 or 12 sides, with the option to scale and rotate. Furthermore, it allows for edge smoothing, which absolutely matches the shape of a real aperture, blades of which are not straight but round.
Custom Pixel Intensity
The effect of various diaphragms can best be seen on luminous pixels. The custom intensity features allow for boosting the RGB values, either based on specular shading, luminosity, special intensity buffer, or through the render directly, based on the HDRI. The result can be modified by custom color filters.
Advanced Motion Blur
Using X-Dof, users can achieve complex optical phenomenon, that includes motion blur and depth-of-field simulated at the same time. X-Dof's precise processing, which can account for the DOF effect alone, ensures an optimal allocation of sampling passes, for the motion blur and depth-of-field simulation.
Limitations
The X-Dof's post-filter doesn't process pixels seen through transparent surfaces. A correct circle-of-confusion on such surfaces can still be accomplished via X-Dof's multipass, or by rendering and processing the scene in separate layers.
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