Depth of Field and Camera Effects

[CSCorbridge]

I'm new at experimenting using the depth of field options. Here's the set up and what I'm trying to do. My camera faces a distant stage with a crowd in between, set up in several layers. I want the camera to pan up over the crowd's heads and zoom in until only the stage is visible. Ideally I want the stage and the crowd layers closest to the stage to be blurred in the distance, and move into focus as the camera zooms in. Any pointers on how I should have my project settings set up, and at what z depths to set my layers (I have about 10 layers of crowd but may make more)? It seems there has to be an easier way than animating the blur radius for every layer as I zoom.

Thank you in advance
-Casey

[sbtamu]

Put all the layers of the crowd in a group layer and just blur the grp and not every layer.

[slowtiger]

To get a nice effect while using 3D camera choose the right Z value increments. Something like:

stage 0
crowd 1 20
crowd 2 22
...
crowd 10 30

Camera starts at about 35 and moves to about 5.

Don't even start to mess with blur settings for each layer - AS does that automatically!

[CSCorbridge]

Thank you for your help, sorry I'm a newbie at using the depth of field functionality. I'm still tweaking with it but it's getting better. I have my z depths set according to your suggestion and I like the effect it's giving my camera's movement through the crowd. I'm still having trouble getting it to focus how I want it though.

In the project settings I have focus distance set to 30 (my furthest back crowd layer - is that what I'm supposed to do?), focus range 2 and blur max 15. I have both boxes "sort layers by depth" and "sort by true distance" checked, but I don't know what these boxes do. Should they both be checked? I have noise grain 0, also unsure what that does.

As things are set now, it keeps the stage in focus and all crowd layers blurred regardless of where the camera zoom position is. Shouldn't the stage go from blurry to clear as I zoom towards it? I've tried changing around the focus distance and range settings but i feel like I'm doing something wrong. Any additional help would be appreciated, thank you for your help thus far.

[drumlug13]

I may be off base or misunderstanding your problem here but I think I may have had a similar issue before. If I remember correctly my problem turned out to be the Origin of the layer. I had a layer that was only blurred on one side or something like that (sorry, that was about a year ago). Try moving each the Layer's origin to the center point of where the camera is zooming in to. If the camera is on a straight zoom and not sweeping or rocking side to side it may fix it.

Again, I apologize if I'm misunderstanding the problem

[slowtiger]

Be sure to really move the camera with the track camera tool (4) (its Z values must change), instead of just zooming in with the zoom tool (5)!

[CSCorbridge]

Eureka! Thank you slowtiger! You nailed my problem perfectly - I was "zooming" the camera instead of actually "moving" the camera through the z axis. Problem solved and all is working perfectly! Thanks again.