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Hi guys, I'm using maxwell studio and I just don't understand how the focusing function works.

I know that when you see the red/blue you should try and make it clear but what properties tab do I adjust to make it clear? I feel like all my pics are out of focus except for a select few and I dont know how I did it so I dont mess with any seetings.

I even tried using the auto focus but either I dont know how to use it or it doesn't work properly?

Any help here will be greatly appreciated, thanks.

These things have a big impact on focus:

Scene scale - first make sure your objects are at the true scale

F-Stop - works like a real camera

Focal point - switch your viewport to a different view and adjust the camera's focus distance

Hope this helps.

If those tips don't help it would also be good to know what you are rendering. It's much easier to get noticeably out of focus on something small like jewelery than it is on architecture for instance.

-Brodie

-p.s. also make sure you're not modeling drunk. sometimes that causes blurriness that can be mistaken for an out of focus camera.

Auto focus works great for me. I do a lot of jewelry images and when doing things like this, auto-focus works fine...just make sure to pick the appropriate surface to focus to and start with a high f-stop, maybe 50 or so with a 50mm lens. I like having larger f-stops since it gives better clarity to all of the parts of the piece. Here's an image of a large yellow diamond ring that I modeled recently using those settings and auto-focus.

Thanks for the info everyone.

Michael how do I pick a surface to use auto focus on??? Do I just select the shank then right click and select auto focus or something?

I don't really think I understand how the F-stop and focal point affect each other so I guess I'll have to do some reading in the manual because I just don't get it.

I don't know much about auto-focus but I've had luck with the "focus to" option (or whatever it's called), where you select it and then just pick the surface you want in focus.

With regards to the f-stop and other camera settings, one of the best parts of Maxwell is that (unlike a biased renderer like Vray) there is SO much more information out there other than what's in the manual. There are tons of photography sites, or wiki's on things like f-stop that are way more detailed than the manual could ever be. Sometimes you can find photography sites that have images which are similar to what you're going for and they'll even give you the camera settings they used to take the photo. That can give you a real good starting point.

-Brodie

Also good to know, thank you Brodie. Guess I'll have to do some googling instead

Oh and Michael where did you get the yellow diamond material? I also need that material and cant seem to find it in the resource library. Is it a complex IOR?

I always use the Maya measure tool from a top view and enter the distance into the Maya camera under the maxwell tab for manual focus distance.

How do you autofocus in Maya?

1) First make sure you are using the correct EV number and select lock exposure.

2) Context click and select "focus to" from menu -- click on object you wish to be the focal point.

3) Adjust Fstop -- down to create a smaller depth of field (more blurry out-of-focus elements) and up to increase depth of field (less blurry out-of-focus elements)... if you go high enough the readout will say infinity and that means everything will be "in-focus".

While learning real camera parameters is a great way to start, it is worth noting that Maxwell is not bound by the same rules and can do some things that are simply not possible with a film camera(which is what most online information is based on).

Best,
Jason.

jfrancis wrote:I always use the Maya measure tool from a top view and enter the distance into the Maya camera under the maxwell tab for manual focus distance.

How do you autofocus in Maya?

In Maya, I prefer to do the following...

- Create camera with aim (and up if you need it)
- create measure distance tool which will give you two locators in the scene plus the measure distance
- snap one of the locators to the camera plane, and then parent it to the camera
- group the other locator and the distance in the top level camera group
- connect the distance attr to the mxFocusdistance of the camera

This will given you independent control over aim and focus so you could do effects such as a rack focus without changing the aim.

dmeyer wrote:

jfrancis wrote:I always use the Maya measure tool from a top view and enter the distance into the Maya camera under the maxwell tab for manual focus distance.

How do you autofocus in Maya?

In Maya, I prefer to do the following...

- Create camera with aim (and up if you need it)
- create measure distance tool which will give you two locators in the scene plus the measure distance
- snap one of the locators to the camera plane, and then parent it to the camera
- group the other locator and the distance in the top level camera group
- connect the distance attr to the mxFocusdistance of the camera

This will given you independent control over aim and focus so you could do effects such as a rack focus without changing the aim.

excellent

Thanks guys just read all your suggestions I'll give it a go today and let you know where I'm at, because right now after shrinking my model down to actual size I've not been able to get a single model in focus...

Some of the advice is a bit over my head I"ll admit as I'm a new user and working within maxwell studio not any plugins..But I'll give it a go and get back to you all thanks so much for the help.

Jay,
can you pm me your studio file? if you are ok with it, may be you are overlooking something in the set up, May be I can help
Philip

Sending to your email today, thanks Philip!

did you pm me the file ?