Having been doing quite a lot of rendering lately I thought it was worth doing a quick post about post render production. Rendering is a slow process, particularly when you’re making minor tweaks to settings and re-rendering over and over again. It’s easy to get a little tied up in tweaking and forget that you have another tool in your arsenal. I tend to get my render generally close to where I want it without seeking perfection, Photoshop (or Pixelmator) can take care of the rest.
Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool that can correct, hide or mask all kinds of issues in your initial render. A good example of this was the depth of field I added to my Tech Deck render. It would have taken an age to render with DOF in Cheetah3D. It took a couple of minutes to add it in Photoshop and it’s easily editable.
Don’t forget about post render production!
Hi Dave, very good post but can you tell us how you create DOF in Photoshop or Pixelmator? Are you somehow able to render out a depth mat in C3D? I work in After Effects and a simple way to fake DOF is by simply masking out the background and blurring it, it’s allot of work and doesn’t look as good as true DOF. I am trying to find out if I can render out a depth mat in C3D that I can use I AE. I am new Cheeta3D and this is a great blog you have, thank you for that.best,-b
Hi, thanks for the comment – always nice to know that people are reading this blog!The technique I use is basically the same as the one that you use in After Effects. You’re right that it probably doesn’t look as good as real depth of field on the render but you do have a lot more control. With a little bit of masking I think you could get very close to what you’re wanting to achieve.
Thank you Dave that was quick, yes I completely agree creating DOF manually with masks can look very good (as in your Tech Deck Render) and it’s very flexible. However it’s very time consuming when working with animations so I am hoping to find something a bit more automatic.
I’m actually quite surprised that a similar technique isn’t quick to produce in After Effects – I guess if the camera is moving and the object isn’t remaining in the same position then it becomes a little more tricky!
Yep It’s pretty quick to do on a single image or an animation that has a simple background and foreground element. When the scene gets more complicated it’s just takes more time and there is never enough time 🙂