I really miss the option to unsharpen certain objects with the camera lens. For example: you see a closeup of a talking character who stands in front of some objects, let's say a wall. Since that wall is not important in that shot, you want to have the focus on the character only, hence you need to set a blur effect on the wall.
It would be awesome to have that feature, and even more awesome if you could keyframe it. I'm really wondering why nobody asks for this, since thats something you need for almost any kind of movie.

What I do is place an image that is semi-transparent behind the character but in front of the object in the distance. Adjusting the transparency, color and image content you can obtain various effects similar to what you are looking for.

Having a depth of field on the camera would be better but until then...

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

Hi, thanks for the hint. Unfortunately i couldn't find a video that deals with that particular issue, although you have some other interesting stuff there!

As for that semi transparent image: how does it work to unsharpen an object with another image? Let's stay at my wall example: If I use a white image in front of the wall, I can brighten up the wall, with a black image the wall would become darker the more I fade it in, that's all pretty clear to me. But how exactly can I attach a blur effect to the wall with another image? Do you have a solution for that? Is there a solution at all? Thanks for your help!

Using a transparent image you can brighten, dim, or color the objects behind it. If you also use a subtle pattern in the image you can obtain other effects (i.e. fog, smoke, etc.)

Original Scene:


Scene with semi-transparent image with pattern (spray painted):


You can also take a snapshot of your scene (F10), hiding those items you don't want blurred, and use an image editor to blur it, then place it back on the stage and size and position.

Background all blurred:


Partial background blurred (note flowers on bench behind Cherry):

Jeff


Get my Plugin Manager and TaskNotes plugins for iClone.
Check out EZColors and Other products for CTA/CA. EZColors: the easy way to change Render Styled (RS) colors!
See my CTA Tutorials on the YouTube channel CTAStepByStep

Thank you for the good idea with the F10-method.

But I do not really understand the first method using a transparent image.
How do you produce a transparent image?