Daz in Depth - Cues?

Ptrope

Not depth maps this time - I'm looking for depth cues. Is this possible in Iray? I realize it's a PBR, but sometimes I'd like to have something a bit less memory-intensive than calculating atmospheric volume. It's a simple process elsewhere - is there a way to 'turn on' depth cueing?

Richard Haseltine

You mean vary the tone or saturation by distance? I don't believe so, but you could of course add a depth passs and use that as a mask in your image editor.

Ptrope

Yeah, we already had that discussion on another thread ;)

I guess the solution will have to be old-school - an object parented to the camera that's a collection of planes where you can modify opacity and color. I haven't had any acceptable results using volumes, so far, plus the extended render times.

There's documentation here on the site for depth cueing - I just haven't found this in my 4.10 yet ... http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/interface/panes/shader_mixer/bricks/dzdepthcuebrick/start . Again, it appears to have similar elements to the depth cue function available elsewhere, just more obscure and difficult to create. Do Daz's programmers ever use their product, or are they just enthralled by the process of writing the code? Not that this is specific to Daz - I deal with software every day where it seems like the programmers have never actually had to use what they create.

Richard Haseltine

I'm pretty sure that brick is for 3Delight, not Iray, in any event.

Depth cues are not something that I have seen many requests for, so I don't think it's right to hold the developers (and marketing, who will set the dvelopers' priorities) responsible for their absence. You can always make a feature request https://www.daz3d.com/help/help-contact-us

Ptrope

I created an OBJ of 25 parallel polys - at 2% opacity and a slightly purple diffuse color, it works perfectly for depth cueing - just move it into place and scale it to create the transition rate. Old school.