September 2025 - Daz 3D New User Challenge - Depth of Field and Canvases
Scott Livingston
Posts: 4,348
Are you new to the 3D World? Are you at the beginning stages of learning 3D rendering? Have you been around for a little bit but feel you could benefit from some feedback or instruction? Have you been around a while and would like to help other members start their creative journey? Well then come and join the fun as we host our newest render challenge!
Back by popular demand (or because we think it went well), we are breaking down each month into two different challenges:
A Beginner Challenge and an Intermediate Challenge.
So which "Challenge" should you choose?
Follow the Beginner Challenge if you are:
- New to the New User Challenges
- New to Daz Studio
- Newer to 3D Rendering in General
- Or if you have not participated in the September Depth of Field Challenge in a previous year
Follow the Intermediate Challenge if you have:
- Participated in the New User Challenge for a while
- Know the basics of Daz Studio and would like to learn more in-depth topics
- Been using 3D Rendering Applications for a while and feel comfortable with learning Intermediate Topics
- Or if you have already participated in the September Depth of Field Challenge in a previous year
*Please be sure to list in your post which Challenge you are participating in*
Closing date for both is September 30, 2025
____________________________________________________________________________________________
If you would like to review the previous topics and information you can find the topics/threads here:
- Beginner/Intermediate January: Composition/Instancing & Duplication
- Beginner/Intermediate February: Lighting/Light Effects
- Beginner/Intermediate March: Posing and Puppeteer/PowerPose
- Beginner/Intermediate May: Using Props and Push Modifiers/Deformers
- Beginner/Intermediate June: Scenes, Landscapes, and Working Modularly
- Beginner/Intermediate July: Portrait Rendering and L.I.E.
- Beginner/Intermediate September 2024: Depth of Field and Canvases
I will be checking in, as will the rest of the Community Volunteers, to try and help with anything you all may need.
For a list of the current challenge rules, please see this thread: Challenge Rules
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Comments
Beginner Challenge - September 2025
"Focus/Depth of Field"
This month's focus will be on Depth of Field/Focus.
Depth of Field is basically controlling what part of the image is in sharp focus. A couple of explanations, from the world of photography (so not everything is applicable, but the definitions and basics do apply when rendering).
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm
http://digital-photography-school.com/understanding-depth-field-beginners/
Inspiration
Tips and Examples, Studio:
http://flipmode3d.com/depth-of-field-daz-studio/
http://www.versluis.com/2015/04/how-to-render-with-depth-of-field-in-daz-studio/
http://www.sharecg.com/v/52258/browse/3/PDF-Tutorial/DAZ-Studio-Tutorial-Depth-of-Field
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/19195/daz-depth-of-field-settings-a-general-starting-point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuAIDTH0YoA (Depth Of Field In Daz Studio 4 10)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0jMBdrMo40 (Daz Studio Depth of Field)
Tips and Examples, Poser:
http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/dof_p5.html
http://www.trekkiegrrrl.dk/DOFtut1.htm
Tips and Examples, Bryce:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/3855/
Tips and Examples, Carrara:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gliniNqq8_k
Other Helpful Links
When following tutorials, be cognizant of the different applications (Bryce, Daz Studio, Poser, Carrara Blender, etc.) and different render engines (3Delight, Iray, Reality, etc). Techniques for one may not apply directly to another. If you have some favorite portrait lighting and composition tips, please share them in this WIP thread.
Composition Golden Ratio helpers:
Bryce
DAZ Studio (Also, DS has a built in Rule of Thirds guide; just select Show Thirds Guide in the Viewport context menu)
Don't forget to look at previous themed contests where information and hints are available. Here is the depth of field challenge from last September and here's the challenge from 2023.
Intermediate Challenge - September 2025
"Canvases"
This is a general render challenge with the focus on rendering separate layers, or canvases, for compositing in an image editor, such as Photoshop or Gimp. Daz Studio supports Canvases natively via the Iray render engine, found in Render Settings > Advanced > Canvases. Creating separate layers in 3Delight is also possible with the use of premium vendor products.
Iray Canvases are very powerful, allowing a lot of control over your final image. They can also be very confusing until you understand how to create a canvas and how to use the resulting image. Like any tool, the more experience you get with it, the more the necessary details will become second nature.
A quick Overview of Iray Canvases:
Using the tools provided in the Canvases settings, you can "tell" Daz Studio to create multiple layers of image information with a single render. There are options to specify Type, (beauty, diffuse, specular, depth, etc.,) and options to specify Nodes, (aka objects.) An option to use Alpha exists for most types and will create an alpha layer for the EXR file, which can be loaded as transparency or an alpha channel.
Once you've enabled Canvases, a new section will show in the Render Settings for Canvases, where you can select which canvas will be rendered to the render window. Tone Mapping is on by default and will be applied to the image in the Render Window. This give you a good reference image if your Beauty canvas is selected.
When the render completes and you save the image, Daz Studio will save a folder for the Canvases in the same folder as the saved image, with the same name and "_canvases" added. The canvases in that folder are all 32-bit color images in the EXR format. These EXR images will need to be processed to use. They are very much like a "camera raw" image from a Digital SLR camera.
The "magic" of using canvases is in how you process the various 32-bit files into layers and composite them to create a final image.
Information on Using Iray Canvases in Daz Studio:
It's important to remember Iray was introduced to DS several years ago and some details about Canvases have changed during that time. Most of the information from older tutorials linked here will be accurate and worth the time to view. Occasionally, you may find something that is no longer the case. Feel free to let us know what those are. For that reason, the upload date of videos is included with the link. (Forum Member names are included, where known.)
Videos
Forum Threads
Adobe/Photoshop
Photoshop Plugin for OpenEXR - exr-io.com
3Delight Options
We normally do not include store products as options in these challenges. However, it only seems fair to mention these products as DS does not have a native canvas feature for 3Delight, so those working with 3Delight—who may well already own one or both of these products—can also enter the intermediate challenge.
I have tried three times to do canvases and really lost my way in setting it up.
I will try again and if I do succede can anyome tell me if I can use Affinity Photo 2.6 for the postwork. Adobe is to expensive to use these days and I have allways had problems using The Gimp UI.
I am prety sure Affinity supports EXR, but would it work in this sceario.
Personally, I have always used GIMP. I resent paying for that extra bit of functionality and have always found that GIMP was ok for most. I used the Daz_ann0314 vids when I wanted to use canvases and found them to be very useful. I have to confess that I get too lazy with this though, as canvases have really made a difference to some of my work from a while ago!
Beginner DOF Challenge
Figured I'd give this a try. I've never really done much with DOF, but figured I'd give it a try.
Name: Kingsley Driving through a seaside town. Did it from two different angles.
Setting on the first one were:
1ST Photo Frame Width- 29.75 Focal Length- 267.83 Focal Distance- 298.38 F-Stop - 2115.76= Kingsley Speeding down Ocean Side Road
2nd Photo Frame Width- 8.75 Focal Length- 192.11 Focal Distance- 985.31 F-Stop- 2930.87 DOF Driving Kingsley
Completed everything within DAZ Studio using the following: KingsleyHD for Genisis 8,Outfit was Umbra Outfit for Genesis 8 and 8.1 Females and Cyber Samurai Expansion for Umbra Outfit, dforce Wet Style Curly Hair for Genisis 8 and 9 and the car was Ghost Roadster Spyder by Zoro D and HDRI Small Town Delieghts by Dreamlight.
Was going for making her driving and her hair blowing in the wind the focus of the photos.
Title: Finally...
Contest: biginner challenge
For these renders, I created a deset scene with an oasis in Vue, that I exported as a HDRI. Then, I used this HDRI in DS. The renders may be surpising because I blurred the characters and I focussed the camera on the oasis (1st image) and the far away building (2nd image). In fact, i tried different focusses, but I found the emotion of the scene came out better when i blurred the characters... One can see that as a manifestation of the intense fatigue of the journey and the desert heat...
Though it is not very coherent, I don't have any camel in my library, so I replaced it by a horse... Well... Arabs love horse, don't they?
As the same way, iI don't have arabian cloth, so I used the dForce Eastern Nuance for Genesis 3 and Genesis 8 Female(s) (https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-eastern-nuance-for-genesis-3-and-genesis-8-female-s) instead, and I applied a white fabric shader on it. For the veil, i sumply used a plan with a dForce simulation, and a torus obove it. Propably it's not really conventionnal, but I found it did the job.
I hope you'll enjoy them!
No DoF applied yet, but here's my start for the month getting my idea layed out. I intend to try to use DoF on the character being thrown by the blast.
Is there a reason for using such high values for F/stop ? You're unlikely to see any DoF going this high.
If you look at photos taken with people driving, you'll see that in many cases, the opposite side of the car is blurred and some photographers will also get a stronger focus on the driver, making the driver-side side-view mirror blurry too.
If you're going this high because you're using an HDRI and you found the HDRI too blurry, while using HDRI can make DoF a bit more difficult to work with (because most HDRI are not made with DoF in mind so they could be too blured for what you're trying to do) there is a couple of possible tricks.
The main one is to render the scene with the Dome set to off (so without the HDRI being visible), then do a render with only the HDRI, with DoF set to Off in the camera, then merge them in Photoshop / Affinity Photo / GIMP / Etc, creating the DoF on the HDRI yourself (most of these programs should have a tool to mimick DoF).
On your first render, not related to DoF, but you could try to put a spotlight to shine some light on her face (to mimic someone holding a reflector on a photoshoot / movie stage), it feel a bit too dark around here
NOT AN ENTRY
You don't need high a F/stop just use regular photographic settings.
This image has a very narrow DOF and the background is a HDRI in the dome.
Click on image for full size.
These are the camera settings.
ELOR and FISHTALES,
I appreciate the feedback. Currently trying to work on it but my Daz keeps crashing after about 15 minutes of so. Will keep trying to work on it. Running a RTX 3090 gpun 24gb vram. AMD Ryzen 7 7800 X3D 8 Core CPU, and CORSAIR - VENGEANCE RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6400MHz C32 UDIMM on the system. Nvidea Studio Drivers.
This is a couple of adjustments I've been working on.
Thank you for the insight, this is all greek to me still. Stil not giving up though.
I've been a member for a long while but I don't think I've participated in these challenges before:
Beginner Challenge Entry
Title: A Toast to Lazy Sundays *clink*
Program: Daz Studio 4.24
!!!NOT AN ENTRY!!!
got bord and decided to use these challanges to make an example. i would have done examples of both challanges in the one image. but, i don't edit my work really. maybe blending a few minor spots at most, if at all. so i just went with depth of field.
thanks for giving me something to do!
reaching out | Daz 3D
That's a really stunning image. Did your piece use overlays? I'm still trying to figure them out.
i'm not really sure what you mean about overlays. if you mean taking it into another program like photoshop or something. no, it's straight render. nothing more done to it. i typically don't edit my work in any way other then add my name, and maybe at most some minor blending it some areas.
i'm pretty much self taught, so not too familure with all the lingo.
Beginner Challenge DOF
This is - obviously - part of the welcome gift. I started another attempt with a character, but quickly decided not to work on the DOF parameters *and* to learn how to control rigged characters in the same time :)
Other required information: created in Daz Studio
Title: Between Tasks
A quick remark on the tips: ShareCG has been closed for a while :)
Hello, " I'm the best " with Santauriqua for Genesis 9
Beginner DOF Challenge, make with Daz only
Hello, my second creation: "be careful " with Cristal and Dark Dragons
Beginner DOF Challenge, make with Daz only
Here's version B attempting to use DoF on my scene. Can't tell how well I did, but I think better then most of the times I've tried using DoF (I rarely use it.)
intermediate
t rex
depth canvas for the fog/ dust effect
This Challenge is now closed. Thank you to everyone who participated!
I'm sorry, I meant using an Iray Canvas in your image.
Showcase for the New User Challenge - Depth of Field and Canvases - September 2025
New User Welcome:
davidgold9595 - Hello, "I'm the Best"
Beginners Challenge:
lina.catfish - between tasks
darkseam - A Toast to Lazy Sundays *clink*
Shinji Ikari 9th - sept2025b
Intermediate Challenge:
Aki3D - t rex
Great work, everyone who entered!
thank you and congrats to all!