Tutorial: Depth of Field (DOF) in Vray SketchUp8

Apiwat Hngimhyun  made this as part of his "The Making of Contemporary Kitchen" which we posted last week .  On the other hand, there is a must see tutorial here that we  want to highlight. Because of this, we  are writing this post to point out its importance.  It is about Depth of Field or DOF! If you are a Vray SketchUp user, you know how difficult to achieve this effect. I myself has tried in the past and I failed because of lacking knowledge on how Vray SketchUp works.

What is Depth of Field (DOF)?

Depth of field is the amount of distance between the nearest and farthest objects that appear in acceptably sharp focus in a a rendered image. In the image to the left. We can see the sharpest  area (without blurring) is the water drop and faucet. While as you go farther to this point, blurring occurs. Vray Sketchup could mimic the Gaussian effect of the camera lens with its Vray Physical camera, but certain tricks and knowledge must be applied in order to be successful. In this particular tutorial, Apiwat shows how we can achieved the same effect like the image on the left.

VRAY Physical CAMERA
In order to do this, we need to use the Vray Physical Camera and Tick the Camera DOF "On" (see last image). The success of DOF lies on the lower F stop value and ability to measure correctly the distance between the camera and and the focal point. To find the focus point,  you need to download the Plugin script Advanced Camera Tools HERE. This is a new camera which is only available for SketchUp 8. Once you installed the Advance camera tool, we will use it to measure the distance between the camera and the focal point.


1. Go to Advanced Camera Tool (see image below)
2. Create Camera
3. Name the camera and click ok
4. Lock the camera

Now you will have the camera icon in SketchUP (see the image below). Measure the distance from the focus point to the lens of the camera icon using the "measurement tool". Here, the measurement is 12 inches. THIS IS THE NUMBER that you will enter in the "Override Focal Distance".

Note: Vray units in DOF is measured in inches. If you are using meters, be sure to convert this in inches.

I used V-RAY Physical Camera. Shutter speed@ 200, F-stop is 1.4 and ISO at 100.