One item in folder affected differently by depth of field

macnavi · Post by **macnavi** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 9:20 am

I have a figure on '0' on the Z axle. I have depth of field enabled in the project settings. The figure is sharp, the background (which is on -0.2 and more) has a blur, as it should be. But when I use camera movement (right/left/zoom), the head of the figure, which is in a folder, is blurred, even though the body, arms, hands and feet aren't. Those are also in a folder, but are sharp all the time. There is no blur set up for this head. When I open the folder prefs and tick 'immune depth of field' it doesn't make a difference. It still is blurry until the camera comes almost to a halt. I checked with the orbit tool and the camera keeps always the same distance, only goes from left to right and stops in front of the figure. I can imagine that if the camera is very left from the figure, that it would blur, but it is inconsistent. The rest of the figure is always sharp.

I had it before with another creation. There it was just the hand of the figure. It was also not something I enabled, and there I didn't even have a camera movement. Does anyone know what is going on?

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:21 am

Just a guess: accidently put a normal blur on his head?

macnavi · Post by **macnavi** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 4:00 pm

You would think so, but no.

macnavi · Post by **macnavi** » Tue Mar 13, 2012 1:05 am

I did some testing and figured out why this happens. When I move the head with the Translate Layer tool to move it on the body (body is mirrored, head not, that's why they are each on opposite sites on the screen), the Depth of Field thinks the head is *away* from the body, even though I'm moving it on the X towards the body. So not forward or backwards. The centre point of the head is moving away from the body. Clearly depth of field works in all three directions. There are two ways to solve this:

1) Moving all Origins with the Set Origin tool
2) Or the lazy way: by expanding the focus range in the Project Settings pane to 2.2.

Solution 2 wouldn't be a good solution if the character was going to move around a lot this way. Part of the body would go out of focus, where the rest wouldn't.

I hope the issue and solution is explained clear enough. If anyone runs into this problem, you know why.