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How to Use The New Depth Of Field In Cinema 4D R13 104 Comments

I’m finally back in Chicago and excited to do more C4D tuts. In this tutorial, I show you how to use the new Depth Of Field settings in Cinema 4D R13. The new physical camera and physical render settings allow us to set the f-stop to control the amount of Depth Of Field just like in a real camera. It even allows us to push it more than a regular camera would let us for super-shallow DOF effects.

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104 Comments

    • John

      try the cineversity tutorial for motion blur it tells you all you need to know.

      Reply

  3. Steve

    Hi Nick,

    Would you use the physical render DOF for animations or stick to the depth pass because of rendering times?

    Reply

  5. Walfrido

    I have spent a couple of days trying to figure it out and you have brought the answers to all my questions in a great tut.
    Thanks so much!

    Reply

  6. chase

    There is a plugin/script that i have that does DOF even better than this Nick.

    Sorry people I don’t have that link on me – However Nick if you’d like, shoot me an email and i send you the link or a copy of the script.

    chase

    Reply

  7. Laurel

    Hello Nick,
    I’ve searched the R13′s help menu, preferences and various online tutorials, but cannot locate how to enable the R13 camera’s Depth of Field contact points, defined by yellow dots.
    There are 4 yellow dots with a central dot that defines the cameras depth of field … these are not enabled in the physical camera …

    How do I enable this visual aid, so as to grab the field and changed the focal distance interactively?
    much appreciated,
    Laurel

    Reply

  8. Laurel

    Hello I’ve searched the R13′s help menu, preferences and various online tutorials, but cannot locate how to enable the R13 camera’s Depth of Field contact points, defined by yellow dots.
    There are 4 yellow dots with a central dot that defines the cameras depth of field … these are not enabled in the physical camera …

    How do I enable this visual aid, so as to grab the field and changed the focal distance interactively?
    much appreciated,
    Laurel

    Reply

  9. John Lewis

    I believe you referenced ‘those of you familiar with Digital SLRs’ in your intro to the subject. I’m old enough to be familiar with the f/ stops on bolexes! Thanks for the great tut.

    Reply

  10. mary

    Hi! I liked the tutorial, although when I chose the ‘Progressive Pass’ (52 minutes ago), it’s still rendering in the 139 pass. How many passes are there with the PP option?

    Reply

  11. John

    Hi Nick, I’ in r13 can you tell me why DOF physical render is only blurring the texture on the object and not the object itself?

    Reply

  14. Joe Staley

    Wow how EXTREME is the DoF on that Peg!?

    Nice tips though thanks! I’m having trouble with the advanced biped in character controls… any chance you can cover this?

    Cheers x

    Reply

  16. Chris

    Does R13 effect your plugins in anyway, particularly thinking about the user of the new physical render vs you two studio packs. What are the pros and cons of choosing one over the other

    Reply

  18. Ben B

    Any idea whether the Depth pass can recognise alphas in textures yet? Such an annoying thing not to be able to do.

    Reply

  20. Tyler Kuster

    Great tutorial Nick!
    One useful thing I’ve found is to have the focal length lock onto a cube and make the cube a child of the camera and hidden from the renderer.
    Towards the end of the tutorial you were trying to show a “difficult render”, but I don’t think your focal length was changing with the movement of the camera so the results were just blurs. Great stuff though nonetheless.

    Reply

  22. PHi

    great results!
    too bad physical is SOOOO slow…
    3lightproductstudio GSG LKP>
    AR3 GI : 8 sec (low settings but clean)
    Physical : 7 mn!!! (and grainy result)

    Reply

  24. Alan Adamik

    Now I feel like i’m a photographer :)
    I’m loving the new physical renders !

    I learned a bunch of stuff from photographer friends that i just re apply in R13 last week. Like what F-stop, shutter angle/speed are and what they’re used for.

    Basically, Fstop changes the depth of field and Shutter Angle/speed change the motion blur. (and if I remember right, they both also affect the overall lighting)

    Am I right ?

    Reply

  28. Sock Gardener

    It’s worth remembering that the Physical Camera and the Indirect Illumination mode, although linked, are two separate things.
    You can continue to use the older GI (IR + QMC for instance) and still have access to the new DoF and motion blur. In a lot of cases this is going to be way faster than using the new GI (although not always).

    Reply

  29. Bilal

    Amazing results

    But Very Slow any Solution .

    Sir

    ?

    Reply

  30. fasteddie

    Thanks Nick.

    Using / animating a null and using it as the Focus Object seems an easier and more accurate method than entering a Focus Distance.

    Reply

  31. craig

    How dod you make that book? (in the previews below the video) looks really cool nick! tutorial on that?

    Reply

  32. Martin

    Is it only me or is every video on this site out of sync? I like the site though :) Good work Nick!

    Reply

  33. Revivalution

    So glad you are back in town. Been looking for some R13 tutorials. Would love it if you could break down some good settings for the physical rendering engine. I’ve got it working for some animations but my settings are either taking for ever or looking like crap. I’ve got to be missing something somewhere.

    Reply

  34. Hands On Music

    Great Tutorial Nick! It seems that most people prefer to use the physical render for still images.. Will you be making any tutorials on the new character animation tools?

    Reply

  35. patweiss

    so…again ;) really great renders! the dof looks awesome!

    Thank you Nick! Can’t wait to earn more money for updating to C4D R13.

    Reply

  37. Luke

    Thanks Nick. I love sitting down to a new tutorial with a hot mug of Red Rose tea.

    Regarding focus shifting: I personally prefer to do it the old fashioned way – with the camera itself moving. Helps me get away from what I’ve dubbed SCS – Static Camera Syndrome.

    Reply

  40. 8bitfactory

    Some nice tips, im stoked about being able to apply a custom shape to the iris for some interesting bokeh effects too – also mind sharing where you got that HDRI image from? its lovely!

    Reply

  41. iones

    Upload that scene Nick, i wanna do the same test you did i’m not a modeler can’t do pretty things yet.

    Reply

  42. Ben

    Good day Guys,

    The previous way from R12 is that i set the depth in the camera object which will allow me to have the depth pass.

    Can we achieve the nice dof and motion blur from the R13 physical renderer in post? Like rendering out a depth and vector pass from the physical camera? I tried and uncheck the dof and motion blur in the physical render and use the multi pass and brought it to AE but just could not get the nice render R13 has.

    Am i doing anything wrong?

    Regards.
    B.

    Reply

  44. patrick

    How do you get your renders to look sooo damn real man!

    Reply

  47. Nikolay

    Thank you so much for the lessons. Greetings from Russia.

    Reply

  49. Carlos Gálvez

    Great news! Realflow doesn’t seem to have released a plugin for C4D r13 yet, but I tried using the old one for the r12 and it works!
    So excited, I didn’t expect so

    Reply

  51. Sam

    Nick, what happen with rigid body in cinema 4d r13? Can’t turn on dynamic when apply to an object like I use to do in R12. Any info? Tnks!!

    Reply

  52. Orcun A.

    There was a problem when you use transparent objects like glass. If a glass wall overlaps with a thing that far away DOF engine ignores the far away thing. I don’t know If I can explain it. :S
    Have maxon fixed that problem?

    Reply

  53. Spenser

    Nice as usual. Hey any chance you could do, or maybe have already, A tut about doing DOF / motion blur stuff in post? You touched on it briefly but maybe a little tut showing the process would be cool, because I have wondered how that would be best achieved. Thanks U silly Gorilla!

    Reply

  54. John

    I definitly liked that tutorial. What I couldn’t belevie is the physical renderer in progressive mode.
    In your tut you already pointed it out, that this setting will slightly works on the shadows and goes on and on and on and on…

    At the beginning I was that disapointed about the result, even still had your words in mind.
    I thought, R13 was already done. The only thing was, that all processors were still on max.
    Even after a couple of minutes, but the result now was amazing. I couldn’t believe my eyse. But as said: after minutes!
    It seems, that it gets better and better. I start making screenshots, just to proof it and even after 10 minutes, the shadows still getting still optimized.
    It’s cool on the one side, but on the other, well, I don’t know. For a still which was done before (with old DOF) in less than a minute and now 15+ min, I don’t see a real efficient way to use it.
    What do you think.

    Cheers
    John

    Reply

  55. Phoenician

    Great tutorial
    Useing Depth Of Field along with the physical render in the progresive mode works great for still images, but what about useing it in animation ?
    it just keeps rendering for evever !would it move to the next frame automatically ? or I have to set something somewhere ! !

    Thanks Nick

    Reply

  56. David

    I just installed R13, and rendered a scene with a visible light shining through some object from behind, but the rays are very grainy. Do you know why that would be. The scene was build in R12 and rendered out fine.

    Thanks a million.
    Love your postings and tutorials!!!!!

    Reply

  57. Shaun

    Thax Nick for the tutorial, just a quick question though… what version of R13 do you use? and can you post your window layout for R13 please…

    Reply

  58. Tanshin

    R13 is making me wish I had a more powerful system so I could render as fast as you Nick. Mine’s still fairly strong (2.66 GHz Quad-Core i7), but it’s nowhere near as fantastic as yours.

    It’s amazing how Physical Renderer can really show just how much a better equipped computer can make better renders. It really illustrates your point about computer upgrades you made a few months back.

    Reply

  59. Tim

    setting the physical render to progressive is nice but one question. in progressive mode I have to stop the render manualy. If I do so in the middle of a pass (lets say pass 50) will the image be saved with the pass 50 unfinished or what?

    Reply

  60. ed

    dude!! i have 24 gigs of rammm and i have an intel croe i7 cpu x990 A3.47 ghz
    64 bit

    and i cant even render the piano strings project that coems with r13? whats up with that?? it tells me i dont have enough ram?? hello!! i have 24 gigs!! anyone else having ram issues with physical renderer?

    Reply

  61. shai

    I all ready test the progressive mode and it makes 127 passes i leave for 25 minutes!! very nice render but you need to stop it always, so i try with the still mode with 12 sub and has the same results.

    thanks Gorilla.

    Reply

  63. Aca

    Nick, I am your big fan.
    You have great tutorials, but the latest tutorials are so bad!
    If you don’t have inspiration, tell us, we will send you some examples for breaking down…
    Thanks

    Reply

  64. fumanu

    Can’t believe that Nick doesn’t talk about alterntives … like “depth map”… and there is not just one comment about “depth map”. All of you: please google “depth map” + Cinema 4D or any other 3D Programm you use.

    And I know… “Depth map” is kinda fake. But its better than those greyscale layers which Nick is using in post.

    Reply

  66. saunter

    Im supporting the V-Ray movement, im still on R11.5 but ive got V-ray for it so all this new stuff in 13 doesn’t seem worth my while upgrading, and im mostly working on still images so mograph and the new physics engine isnt much use. Do I upgrade or stick, is it worth it. Im not convinced.

    Reply

  67. MdW

    Hey there Nick,
    At some point you mention not being able to set a specific clothes pin in the ‘focus object’ field of the camera, due to using a cloner. I don’t have R13 to test it myself, but the first thing that popped into my head was; perhaps if you define a pin using a mograph selection tag, you can drop that into the focus field without having to make the cloner editable?

    Reply

  68. Enrique

    Post-production on a production software is not a good idea. I never use DoF in Cinema so these new features are useless for me. They should really concentrate on dynamics and better animation tools. Nuke, Motion or After Effects do a better job at this.

    Reply

  69. Ivan

    True Lens Land – sounds like one awesome theme park.

    Nice video Nick, looking forward to seeing more R13 stuff soon!

    Reply

  70. Joe

    Hey Nick,
    After seeing some of the examples on Maxon’s youtube channel on the new physical render engine I was really interested in the ability to pull focus with the depth of field effects and get interesting bokeh. I noticed that they were able to get very crisp edges on their bokeh effects. I have tried setting the diaphragm shape to 4,5,& 6 edges but the blurred highlights always appear round and soft. The video can be found at: http://www.youtube.com/user/MaxonC4D#p/u/16/VZpTh-p49k4 and the effect can be seen at 1:29 into the video. I have checked out all the include scenes, like the piano strings and see that they show slightly, but nothing as pronounced in the linked video example. Any info you have or can find on this would be greatly appreciated!

    Reply

  72. CineticMantis

    Great tutorial Nick!

    My camera dof control handles dont shows up in my viewport… anyone has a clue?

    Reply

  73. CineticMantis

    Ok.. Sorry I was not on model mode… so the handles was invisible… AutoFixed!

    Reply
  74. The Gorilla

    The Gorilla

    All the products work great in 13. I even have some new versions coming to take advantage of the new physical renderer.

    Reply

  77. Luke

    True True. A smaller F-stop number means more light is coming through your lens (i.e, brighter lights), and gives you a shallower depth of field.

    The shutter speed is how long each individual frame is exposed to the world. The longer it’s open, the more light that comes in – meaning a brighter scene with more motion blur.

    Reply

  82. AGoberg

    Tags > Simulation Tags > Rigid Body/Soft Body/etc

    That is the studio version, not sure about the others

    Reply

  83. Tanshin

    From my experiment yesterday, they removed the shortcuts from the Simulate menu, forcing you to use the tags like AGoberg mentioned. I’m also running the demo, so it’s possible they’re there in the real version.

    This is also assuming you have Studio.

    Reply

  86. Carlos Gálvez

    Check if you are rendering with the progressive Physical render, wich will show you a very grainy scene at the first pass

    Reply
  87. The Gorilla

    The Gorilla

    It will be saved with the last completed full pass. So in your case, it will be saved as the 49th pass.

    Reply

  88. Tim

    hei “the gorilla”, thanks so much for your answer and for your great work with your tutorials!

    bought your “everything C4D bundle” and love it!

    Reply

  89. Gelo

    I too am getting the memory error but when rendering animations as Quicktime Movie with R13.

    Reply

  90. KF

    I’ve heard you can use the R12 layout (and plugins or kit) in R13.

    Reply

  93. Mic

    I would prefere support for vray in your lightning kits more than for the physical renderer .. :-)

    Reply

  95. Mic

    .. you are the man .. :-) .. vray has the most advanced renderer at the moment and for professional use it´s very popular ..

    Reply

  97. Orcun A.

    So still I must pay for a third party plugin. It’s not that expensive but not cool if I still have to use a third party. Thanks Carlos.

    Reply

  98. David

    I did render with progressive Physical render, but even after 124 passes it was still grainy. The depth of field ended up being very nice, but the visible light stayed grainy. I changed the “Sample Distance” in the “Visibility” tag in the object manager from 25 to 5 and that looked much better but slowed down the render time tremendously.

    Reply

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Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.