unfocused renders

[David Lemelin]

Hey there,

 

I came across an odd issue this morning. I set a series of renders overnight and they all came out extremely out of focus. I went back to each view I needed and selected "focus camera" from the maxwell menu in FZ8, which has resolved the issue... But my question is, how did this occur in the first place?

 

I've always set my views and basic settings in the display options and my renders are always sharp. I typically use an aperture of 2-2.8 and set the shutter speed and film to obtain the brightness I'm looking for. I used the exact settings this time, but the renders were so out of focus that they were not usable.

 

The only thing I can see is that I did some test views in Fire where I'd zoomed in on a few elements quite tightly and had to use focus camera to get a clear test.... Does that mean it resets the focus for all views? Is there a dialog or palette that I should be referencing prior to launching my renders to see an out of focus warning? That would certainly be helpful. I know there's something like that in Studio, but a similar tool in the FormZ interface (assuming the SDK allows it) would be a time saver.

 

Just want to clarify for future reference.

[AHTOH]

My best guess would be: you made a big cam hole (aperture) like below 3 which lowers the depth of field. While the same time you did not point cam`s interest point towards the object you want to be sharp.

 To avoid this trouble you should reduce aperture and focus your camera, which could be done by Edit Cone of Vision (Command+E on Mac or Control+E on Windows). Than point cam`s arrow to the object you aim to. Also you may save view and make it [view] visible and edit your camera viewpoint within modelling window.

[David Lemelin]

Thanks Anton, I will keep those hints in mind!

[pylon]

The focus point in Maxwell is the COI (Center of interest) of the formZ view. You can display the COI in the modeling window by clicking on the visibility icon of any view. This is very rarely necessary, however: Before saving views to the views palette, just select the object you want to be the image focus, and hit Extensions>Maxwell>Focus Camera. (I have mapped CMD-F to that function, so I just hit the key shortcut.) When you return to that view later, if will always be in focus when rendered in Maxwell.

 

You can focus an existing view in your views palette by making the view active, performing the procedure noted above, and then saving the view again with the same name.