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.

The Making: Contemporary Kitchen

The process of making this Contemporary Kitchen has been explained by Apiwat Hngimhyun  aka "Starsheep". Apiwat is a well known Thai visualizer and once featured at the former VRAY Asgvis site  and forums. Personally, we would like to thank Apiwat for allowing us to post this tutorial here at SRV. This tutorial was originally posted by him at www.thai3dviz.com.

In this "the making", Apiwat briefly explained some of the crucial steps on how he made the kitchen below. He also shared a small tutorial on how he successfully achieved the DOF effect. 

Preview of the finished product

Here is Apiwat Hngimhyun


1. MODELS
Hello everyone! This tutorial might have different setting with how other use Vray-Sketchup, but I want to share my experience using this model. The model itself is very simple; walls, doors, windows, cabinets and other fixtures. Some of the components were taken directly from Google 3D Warehouse. Others were produced from different application like Moi. Some components were remapped and edited to add further details. I recommend you to look on Designer Tiago models in the 3d warehouse.

2. LIGHTING

Lighting experiment is one of the most important part after modeling. I will be using V-RAY rectangular light and IES lighting.
 
- Geographical Location on this particular tutorial was set to Bangkok, Thailand.

For render testing with lighting. Use Clay Rendering Set-up. Click Override material with RGB color of 150,150,150.

- Vray rectangular lights were places outside the windows. The Vray rectangular light in front will be the main light source, while the one on the side will be the secondary light source.
 

- Here is the set up of the main light. The size is bigger and yet  I will put the intensty @2 with light blue color. Set as invisible.

- Here is the set up of the secondary light on the side with rather orange color. Again set as invisible.

- Under the Environment Roll out, both GI and BG color were ticked. I am using TextSky Map For the GI while HDR for the BG.

- Below are my setting for the Text Sky Map for my GI color. In order to achieve soft shadows, I increased the size to 5.0 while the intensity was set to 0.1. The rest are fine.

- Here is the HDRI map from www.openfootage.net. I will be using this for my BG map slot.

- Here is the setting for my BG Map. It was set as Spherical. The HDRI file above was loaded under File slot.

3. CAMERA
I used V-RAY Physical Camera. Shutter speed@ 200, F-stop is 1.4 and ISO at 100. Camera DOF is on with Overide Focal Dist @12 (see next images why I used 12 here)

To Find the Focus Point, download the Plugin script "Advanced Camera Tools"
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). Now measure the distance from the focus point to the lens of the camera icon. Here, the measurement is 12 inches. THIS IS THE NUMBER I ENTERED IN OVERRIDE FOCAL DISTANCE IN THE VRAY PHYSICAL CAMERA.

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

4. MATERIALS
Stainless. The below map was used

Refletion:

1. Use Fesnel map. Here is the Fresnel map setting.

2. Use medium gray color (see Filter color)
Height glossiness is 0.6 and Reflection glossiness is 0.8. For smooth result I increased the subdivision to 22.
3. I will be only using the diffuse map at 0.4 (load the stainless map)

Filter color. I used RGB value of 195, 195, 195

Bump map. I use the same map diffuse map for the bump slot, but making the value from 1 to 0.02 only.

5. VRAY Settings

Image sampler Setting

DMC Sampler Setting

Color Mapping Setting

Global Illumination Setting

Irradiance Map Setting

Finally here is the comparison between the Sketchup view and the rendered seting.