Has anyone managed to produce 'production quality' results from iClone with serious (believable) DOF.
I'm not talking 'previz' - rather actual serious 'industry standard' looking results, (which would without a doubt involve exporting layers out of iClone).
Reason being, (unless I can be proved wrong), there is no other way than 'exporting layers' for getting DOF that's consistently believable. (I've been testing on & off for weeks)
And that probably means 'multiple exports' each containing a different 'layer' (ie: foreground/subject/background).
Same for 'moving camera' shots - separate elements recorded, foreground/subject/background.
I'm coming to the conclusion that it's the only serious way to obtain consistently believable DOF.
(I've been 'resisting' this approach like crazy) ..... Tell me if I'm wrong please .......


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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Show us some industry and iClone samples, so we can try test ourselves. I am very new to the concept of DOF, so any amount of learning here will help.


CTA5, Iclone 7, 3D Exchange Pro, Character Creator 3, Popcornfx plugin, Zbrush, Blender, Vue 2014, Adobe cc suite, Spriter
Homebuild Workstation (Pretty old now but still working great) Win 10, Intel i7 950, 24 GB RAM DDR3, Gigabyte x58a-ud7 motherboard, AMD R9 390 sapphire 8GB VRAM.
Official Website  Reallusion Store  

Compared to the old (pre IC-7) system, it's good enough for my purposes, but then again I'm not very interested in perfect, ultra-realistic results. That's said, there are some quirks that need ironing out. 

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@animagic .... yeah it's simply a 'consistency' thing. With a fair amount of tweaking, I can get a single 'frame' to look quite stunning. Meaning that all the blur boundaries behave as they *should*. But of course once you start doing camera moves, or are dealing with many shots, you really don't want to be jigging around constantly chasing a workable DOF. If, as you say, the type of work you're doing doesn't require a fully realistic look - then I understand that it's not an issue. But I'm chasing realism (to the max), and it's the DOF that's not 'selling it' atm. I've actually been trying like crazy to *make it work* because it 'makes sense' to have the environment (iClone) - behave accurately as in 'real world'.

@Famekrafts .... By 'industry standard' or 'production quality' - I simply mean 'of a believable standard that would pass for even high end corporate video', (let alone on air broadcast TV). Or, perhaps another way of saying it would be 'free from telltale defects that would sell the look 'short''. If you look at any professional work where 'conventional cameras' are used and have captured scenes with shallow DOF, you see a 'pleasing' time tested look that's been around ever since the advent of the 'lens'.
The DOF 'transitions' captured by a lens are 'consistent' and pleasing to the eye. Emulating this in something like iClone is probably no easy task. But it either smacks of 'believable' or else it's (unfortunately) 'distracting'.
I'm not saying that *everyone* would notice it. But I do think that every professional with a TV/Doccumentary/ Film/Cinema type background would certainly notice it.

I'm saddened that I can't *somehow* get the DOF 'right' in iClone (easily & consistently), and I would really, really prefer it that way.
I've never been drawn to the idea of 'compositing' - I've always viewed it as a 'protracted' approach, but my 'hand is now forced'.
I either have to live with an 'unconvincing' DOF (with a quick workflow) OR 'convincing DOF (with a protracted workflow).


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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Before the current DOF came along, I came up with a method to create a depth map which can be used to blur based on brightness.


Could you post an example of the DOF failing? It might provide some ideas on how to better utilize it.

Thanks Rampa .... I'll post an example a little tad later when I get back (got to go out for a couple of hours)


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Please be patient with me ..... I don't always 'get it' the first time 'round - not even the 2nd time!   - yikes! ... 

● MSI GT72VR Laptop, i7 7700HQ 4-Core 3.8 GHz 16GB RAM; Nvidia 1070, 8GB Vram ● iClone-7.93 ● 3DXChange Pipeline 7.81 ● CC-3 Pipeline 3.44 ● Live Face ● HeadShot ● Brekel Pro-Body ● Popcorn FX ● iRAY ● Kinect V2 ● DaVinci Resolve17 ● Mixcraft 8.1

Will this work with the current DOF?

CTA5, Iclone 7, 3D Exchange Pro, Character Creator 3, Popcornfx plugin, Zbrush, Blender, Vue 2014, Adobe cc suite, Spriter
Homebuild Workstation (Pretty old now but still working great) Win 10, Intel i7 950, 24 GB RAM DDR3, Gigabyte x58a-ud7 motherboard, AMD R9 390 sapphire 8GB VRAM.
Official Website  Reallusion Store  

Sorry. I should have explained it a little more. It is a way to generate a grayscale mask that you can use in a video editor to selectively blur parts of the image. It creates a mask that is black close to the lens and ramps to pure white far away, so you can then apply a progressive blur in your video editor.

It has nothing to do with the DOF feature.

I don't think sonic uses a video editor/compositor. .........yet







Homebuilt computer - Windoze 10, INTEL i9 9900 k @ 5.1 GHz, EVGA RTX 2080 TI XC ULTRA, 16GB 3100 MHz RAM, Asus  Maximus Hero XI motherboard, Sound blaster Z series. iClone6 & 7 Pipeline, Crazytalk 8, Crazytalk Animator 2, Facefilter, Pop video 3, Hitfilm 4Pro, Cubase 8.5 Pro,

Lol should have gone through the tut first.

CTA5, Iclone 7, 3D Exchange Pro, Character Creator 3, Popcornfx plugin, Zbrush, Blender, Vue 2014, Adobe cc suite, Spriter
Homebuild Workstation (Pretty old now but still working great) Win 10, Intel i7 950, 24 GB RAM DDR3, Gigabyte x58a-ud7 motherboard, AMD R9 390 sapphire 8GB VRAM.
Official Website  Reallusion Store