Using cameras & depth of field in 3D Photoshop

Hi there, this video is all about looking at 3D cameras. We're going to look at creating a cool Depth of Field. You can see in this render here on the left, it's kind of in sharp focus, then as it heads off into the background it fades out. Kind of mimicking a really shallow Depth of Field in a normal camera. We'll show you how to save templated views where everything's kind of angled exactly how you want, and then you can move to different views, to take a look at it from different angles, but always come back to that view you really liked. Let's jump in now and work out how to do it. 

So what is a camera? The camera is what we're looking through. So we're looking through right now through a camera to see this 'Rad' text. Now often what we need to do is kind of get the angle that we love, but also this is the way I wanted to render this angle. Let's say I want to move this closer to the background. So I need a different angle, I need to see how close it is, then kind of drag it in, but then I need to go back, and, "My God, it's not quite the same as it was before." So I'm going to undo. 

So what you do is you set your camera. Up the top here, if you've got Current View selected, go up to here, where it says 'View', and say I want to 'Save' this view, please. This is going to be the 'Rad View'. The nice thing about this is, Rad view saved there, and it means that I can work here and I can get my, say I want this to be-- I click on it, I'm going to move it a bit further out. There's a bit more gap between it. So I'm going to click out here, so I've got the Current View selected. I'm happy with that. Let's say I want to get it back to where it was, or kind of positioned and composed nicely. Let's click on 'Rad View'. Photoshop's clever and moves the camera back. You can have as many views as you like. You can also see these default ones, I can look at it from the top, please. 

So to try to rearrange everything, you can see I'm looking straight down on top. There's my text, and there is my very thin background. Default is the way it opened up, straight on. And I'm going to go back to Rad view. So that's setting up the camera, let's look at Depth of Field. So with 'Rad View' selected up here, you've got this here, the Depth of Field plane. Now let's add a depth. With it at 0, there is no, like super focus, and the higher it is the more shallow the Depth of Field is, let's get at it '2'. What you'll see is, there is a bit of blurriness and a bit of not blurry. Yours will be different because yours is kind of angled differently, but there's like a central bit of focus. That's where this distance comes in and out. So you can kind of move, can you see, if I'm dragging it left and right, it's kind of going past and through to the back, and this only works if you're at an angle, let's go in at a really steep angle. 

So you can see, kind of about two-thirds down the wood. It's in sharp focus, everything else is not. The depth, remember, is how, like sharp that focus is, or how narrow it is, so I'm going to have mine at something like 2. And then the distance, if I go way out you can see, the far distance of our wood isn't focused and this is here. So what I'm going to do, go back to my 'Rad View', and I'm just going to play around with the depth. I like that but I want the kind of sharp focus to be at the front of this R, but this can blur out. 

Now the only trouble with this is that, you can see it's no longer Rad view. Rad view actually is tied into this Depth of Field, so what we're going to do is we're going to save another one. This is going to be 'Rad Depth of Field'. The Rad Depth of Field view. You can leave the other one there, or you can click on it and go, you my friend are-- delete. I go back to Rad view. Awesome! I'm going to hit 'Render'. It's cool but not as extreme as I want it to be. I'm going to hit 'Esc', grab the 'Depth', and you're going to go higher. So all this stuff's getting pretty blurry. Distance. Render again. It's okay. 

I'm going to mess about with it while in between videos, I'm going to do lots of this because I really love that Depth of Field, and I'm really going to try and fake it here. I'm going to experiment while you're in between videos. So I'm kind of back before you go, because of the joys of speeding up the render. I'm happy with that. You can see sharp focus on the left, fading out in the background. Let's get into the next video where we look at lighting and casting shadows, and things.