[THExDUKE]

Hello.

What is the secret behind the camera and the scene scale? I have issues to adjust the FStop sometimes. A Value of 64 is supposed to be an "infinite" FStop. But sometimes it simply does not work and I still get DOF. It does not make a differnece to just change from cm to m. I actually need to scale the geometry to a "real - World" scale. But what if I render sureal elements or cartoon characters? Whats the rule of thumb?

Same question for the emitters. I have realised that the value in efficacy is basically a very importand part in the power-settings, but I have no clue how to set it up correctly. I think a 60W bulb or even a 20W one can lite a room to a certain extent but the efficacy - value changes the emitter appearance dramatically. So again, whats the rule of thumb here?

Cheers in advance.

[Mihnea Balta]

I've moved the thread to the main forum because these questions are not plugin-specific, so you'll get better answers here.

[Half Life]

Always model at real world scale -- or as near as you can... for instance if you want a miniature stop-motion animation effect then use the same camera settings and model sizes as they would in those productions. Here's some reading material to start with the overall big picture of both questions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy

Efficacy should be listed on most light bulbs -- check the manufacturers website.

Best,
Jason.

[THExDUKE]

Thanks for the quick respnse. Ill take a look on those links.

But regarding the DOF... I have seen in the documentation that the Near-Clip or Far Clip needs to be set appropriately. But this is for post (z-Clip) isn´t it? So it has actually no effect on the rendered and "embedded" DOF.
And I seem to have some issues to match the view in Maya (not sure if I need to post this now again in the Maya Plug-Section) to the actual renderview in Maxwell. It has a lot of differences.

[Mihnea Balta]

But regarding the DOF... I have seen in the documentation that the Near-Clip or Far Clip needs to be set appropriately. But this is for post (z-Clip) isn´t it? So it has actually no effect on the rendered and "embedded" DOF.

DOF is not affected by the clip planes. It is influenced by fstop, object size, focal length and focus distance. The focus point is the aim locator of the camera, unless you set the camera to use manual focus distance in the Maxwell Render rollup.

And I seem to have some issues to match the view in Maya (not sure if I need to post this now again in the Maya Plug-Section) to the actual renderview in Maxwell. It has a lot of differences.

Make sure the film aspect ratio matches the resolution aspect ratio. If they do, the Maya plug-in will render the area indicated when you turn on resolution or film gate in the camera settings.