Add DOF and Motion Blur to your C4D Render with After Effects

Third-Party Plugins Needed: Frischluft Lenscare www.frischluft.com/lenscare/in... and Real Smart Motion Blur: revisionfx.com/products/rsmb/
This question comes up all the time: “What is the correct workflow for doing Depth of Field and Motion Blur in After Effects? Cuz when I use the z-pass I get this odd fringing in AE and the vector pass is confusing.
Well, we have you covered! I know what you’re thinking. I just turn on the zpass right? Well, Yes and no.
This tutorial is about saving a TON of render time by NOT having to render your Depth of Field and Motion Blur in C4D’s Physical Renderer. With a couple of After Effect plugins and the correct workflow, you can save yourself potentially hours of rendering.
CORRECTION: Looks like I grabbed the regular RSMB plugin and not the Pro Vector version which reads your vector pass. Sorry about that folks. Grabbing this Pro Vector version and choosing your vector pass will give you more accurate motion blur results.
NOTE: This tutorial originally aired on Vimeo, but we thought it was too useful not to upload to KZbin as well :)
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[@vytasatvmanstudios]

Very well explained. You are getting better and better every tutorial!!!!!

[@robinsquares]

To anyone without the AE plugins: There are very good alternatives native to After Effects. The Lens Blur effect takes a Z-depth pass, and the Timewarp effect can create motion blur.

[@angelmolinalopez9997]

What about if I don't want lens blur. What about if I want to apply a directional blur instead? Or any other kind of effect?

[@robinsquares]

@@angelmolinalopez9997 Timewarp hives you motion blur, if that's what you mean. Do you have an example of another kind of effect you'd like to use?

[@angelmolinalopez9997]

@@robinsquares No, it's not motion blur what I want. I want to add another kind of blur. Apparently you can apply a depth map only with lens blur. Besides, there has to be another way to apply any kind of effect using the depth map, right? For example, an object that changes its colour as it gets closer to the camera.

[@robinsquares]

@@angelmolinalopez9997 Oh I see! You're being very creative with your depth maps! The only sure-fire way I can think of is to use the depth map as a Track Matte on your effect layer. This allows you to fade out an effect, but not to vary its intensity. If you want to get very advanced you can look at the timewarp effect again. You could probably vary an effect over time and then sample different time codes based on your z-depth. But that's getting quite tricky.

[@angelmolinalopez9997]

@@robinsquares Wow thats sound too complex hahaha. It would be nice if there was a tool that would allows you to add your map like the lens blur effect already does.

[@matthiasz2338]

Great way of explanation - it`s like meditation to listen to your knowledge. Thanks!

[@cjmixer99]

Great video! Really helped me out on a project, so THANK YOU!

[@maltepaulsen4311]

That will safe so much time in the future! thanks so much! :)

[@birjuraikwar]

Can't Thank you enough for this, equally helpful even after 2 years!!! Hail GreyscaleGorilla

[@PanewsONE]

Such a valuable piece of information!

[@micheloo]

This was awesome!!

[@RocknRolx]

good one Chad! Very well explained!!

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

[@birjuraikwar]

Amazing Chad! Thank you soo much for the information.

[@Greyscalegorilla]

You're welcome!

[@montoyajulian2]

You just save my life, thanks a lot man!

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Thanks for watching!

[@xavierbonet945]

Hi! This is a *great* tutorial! I've used it a couple of times and it works great. But I'm working on a specific project where I'm getting a weird result (at least weird to me): my B channel (Z) appears as just blue and black (everything but the infinite empty space behind is pure blue), whereas the R and G channels do show that variation in Z space as gradients according to what is nearer or farther from the camera. I'm working a scene that's sort of around natural scale, with subject in the foreground and some mountains in the background. So I've been trying different Scales but I see no variation. I've tried from 0.001 to 100, trying several possibilities in between, and there's no change at all. What could be going on? Thanks in advance for your help!

[@JimYeo]

I still see that you get a pinching effect in the DOF blur where two different DOF intersect. I still haven't seen a proper solution to that problem in post except by rendering the the objects in different passes (and applying the DOF individually to each object and comping them on top of each other afterwards), or rendering the DOF in the 3D camera. The motion blur hides the defect, but still I'd like to see a solution to the problem.

[@maxlirnyk9032]

Thanks for tutorial Chad! Can i use this technique with Arnold? Or only physical?

[@tagore4d]

Awesom tutorial.. thank you very much.

[@JoeLancaster]

Heya. Learned some things. Thanks! Just a heads up - you're using RSMB wrong. When you use the standard RSMB it does not read motion vectors. By selecting 'alternative motion source' you're just telling it to track the literal motion of another source. It doesn't know it's a motion vector pass. You'll get the same result by selecting nothing, perhaps even better. To use an actual MVP you need to use the RSMB motion vector plugin.

[@czlowieknoz]

great tut

[@8505angel]

Hey man, great tut! but while some of the areas look better, it seems like there are others where gets the pass still make a little fringe. Any suggestions?

[@johncookie4415]

If I have a multi pass render with Raw RGB, Ambient Occlusion, Diffuse, Specular, etc. when do I apply the Motion Blur pass? Do I apply the moblur on every pass and THEN combine the passes? Or do I first combine the passes and THEN blur?

[@aeko]

How about the Motion Vector pass out of Redshift? I haven't been able to get it to work with AE.

[@Garuso93]

Great One!

[@TheSilverfox17]

but does always working with position pass works fine ? or only if camera is static

[@BABDOfficiel]

Good job friends

[@motiongod]

Thanks this is really helpful

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Thanks!

[@mendezcreative]

Very comprehensive. thank you. One side question, what's the difference between 32bit exr and half float? other than their file size

[@Greyscalegorilla]

This should help www.openexr.com/about.html

[@77dris]

Would love to know how to do this in Resolve/Fusion.

[@jhalanddesign]

Install proexr and the playback speed is better in AE and you can use “file/create proexr layer comps” to split the multilayer exr into all the different parts

[@grantvanzutphen7052]

I'm using R21 and there's no option to select a position pass from the multi-pass menu. Has it been renamed since this tutorial?

[@imalexx]

Hi Chad, thank you for the tutorial, I'm using R19 and when I choose OpenEXR in the multi-pass I don't have the option button to choose the compression like you do in the video, do you know why is that ?

[@nicolajslvsten4978]

same here..

[@HussienG2]

next to openEXR there's a small black arrow, click it and it will reveal the compression options.

[@najim0586]

very nice

[@jordanwischmann101]

So.. this effect works really well but I'm having issues with one thing. I have an object that has an alpha channel and slight opacity. Does this method break (similar to usual depth pass) when you have an object with alpha in your scene?

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Sometimes this method will break with transparent objects. Thanks for watching!

[@impylse]

hey Chad, cool tutorial but maybe its better to point out that it doesnt matter if the precomps are above or bellow the adjustment layer. not only because they are off and would not get affected (duh), but all of those plugins look directly in the precomp and would ignore even effects applied directly on the precomp layer itself.

[@bigbro890]

Yea, I got scared for a min that I am doing it wrong this whole time. I always put my adj layers on top of everything and it works fine

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Thanks for the tip!

[@R3DMyst]

If it doesn't matter, then why do you think it's important to address this?

[@arsen_wasted]

Very usefull, thanks!

[@cgpov]

Арсентий Ларионенко you're welcome!

[@SuperPhunThyme100]

Now, when you render a Depth Pass out of Redshift, will that be correct?

[@nicolajslvsten4978]

any tips on how to determine scene scale for the position pass? I feel like there should be a measuring tool from the closest distance to the furthest from which a scale is calculated..

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Hmmm...sorry, no tips on figuring out scene scale. I wish there were a better method for getting a good zpass out of physical, it's much easier in other renderers. Thanks for watching!

[@rolandsommer]

Hi, great Workflow Tutorial. Just to give you the right wording for this DoF AE Plugin: Frisch (fresh) and Luft (Air) 🤓.

[@Greyscalegorilla]

We always struggle with that, thanks!

[@xvisionimaging273]

great!!!

[@tagore4d]

I am a beginner in C4D. Can someone plz clarify how to know the 'Scene scale' that is mentioned at 06.01 seconds ?

[@itsknowone]

What about for octane. I feel like I run into a similar issue where the DOF falls apart pretty quickly when I add it back in. Would you use the Position Pass from Octane in the same way?

[@amiri7392]

I don't know since i don't use it but often I render the main render then i change the render settings with everything off, AA off, and disabling lights, shadows, etc. After that you can run a position pass which will be relatively quick to render.

[@cgpov]

I believe that octane has a correct zpass, but I'll check. Thanks for watching!

[@itsknowone]

I't probably does. I just feel like I often run into an issue where I crank up the depth of field and it starts to lose quality and sort of shows edges. But I should just play around with it more. Thanks again for all the awesome tutorials.

[@amiri7392]

Yea that happens to me too.

[@HadiKarimi]

smart workaround but i always use RPF instead of EXR it doesn't have anti-aliasing and works nice in After Effects!

[@chansmartoo4325]

metoooo

[@ainjeffery]

how do you extract the multipass channels with rpf?

[@IsuruRandika]

How to do this in Redshift ? It doesn't work like this

[@colby4390]

How does this work if you have front and back blur? Think a field of flowers or something and you want to focus on one 10 ft in front of you but have the foreground and background blur.

[@Greyscalegorilla]

You can only push this technique so far before it falls apart and you have to do some comp tricks or just buckle down and render it with in-camera DOF. Thanks for watching!

[@jellsart]

Hey Chad, tha'ts a fantastic tuto. Do you know if it work with a aec import after effect files ?

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Hmm not sure I completely follow. You want to import the camera from C4D into AE?

[@jellsart]

Sorry, english isn't my first language. So, I use AEC files to import my EXR passe into AE. And i would like to know if your technique work with this way of importing files.

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Yes, this technique does not depend on having multi-channel exrs. You should be fine importing all of the EXR passes separately.

[@jellsart]

Greyscalegorilla ok thank you. Have a good day

[@beMOTIONdESIGN]

This is hands down THE BEST solution I've found in getting fringe-less post DOF in After Effects! Now if I could only get that damn motion vector pass to work. I find I get the best motion blur results with RSMB when I DON'T use the motion vector pass.

[@aeko]

21:03 - Not sure why you're using RSMB and not RSMB Pro Vectors. I get a lot of artifacting around edges when I use the regular version.

[@oliverk2897]

Save yourself precious time and render the depth pass only at 2-3 times the resolution of the beauty pass with AA turned off. Then scale depth pass down & precomp in AE for use with FL DoF.

[@HaeroTV]

only in rare cases you'll see together DOF+MotionBlur working at post production. In most cases it's fucked up. these are two mutually exclusive effects, you can only use one of them for post production at a time

[@cjngsart]

First! Keep this good stuff coming!

[@od.skills]

You have recreate this tutorial?

[@Greyscalegorilla]

No, as Chad said we just moved it over from vimeo.

[@bahienseCarlosLuis]

ha, waiting until half the video to mention that unless you have 2 specific plugins the tutorial will not help you much is not a very nice way to make people watch at least half the video :(

[@paulvansommeren]

You CAN actually use AE's Lens Blur for the DoF. I don't think there's a standard effect that takes a MB pass, but you could use Pixel Motion Blur to simulate motion blur after the fact.

[@no1_of_note]

Both of which have a combined total cost of $300. No biggie. I'll just order my lobster without the shaved black truffles and the pearl albino caviar next time I'm out for lunch. Maybe have just a glass of the Château Lafite 1869, instead of the bottle. Small price to pay for that blur though. Mmmmmyummy.

[@MayxHD]

It's clearly stated in the description..?

[@vfxnation6919]

Is there a way to do it with Arnold?

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Absolutely! Arnold has Depth of field and Motion blur.

[@vfxnation6919]

Ik , 😅 I meant the world position pass I couldn't find it in Arnold, ​@@Greyscalegorilla

[@vfxnation6919]

​@@Greyscalegorillathanks for the reply ❤

[@Gireshahid33]

Just use built in Pixel Motion Blur effect,

[@cameronleahy4039]

Isn't this an old video?

[@paulvansommeren]

It's an update from May 31st, 2016. It was originally called 'Your Depth Pass Is Wrong'

[@Greyscalegorilla]

Yep, Chad mentions it was previously on Vimeo during the intro.

[@shedisurf]

is this video fully up to date? I'm going through the process right now (with R19) and the options for openEXR doesn't include the option Chad chooses at 9:11 in the video???

[@Greyscalegorilla]

It was done in R18. This video was re-uploaded from Vimeo

[@EZZYLAND]

video starts at 10:20

[@JasonBlack66]

i wish i had unlimited money for all the plugins and programs to do all this :/ I dunno how your supposed to get started in mograph etc unless you or your parents have a gold card

[@Greyscalegorilla]

You used to need a gold card when 3D packages were $10,000. But it’s cheaper then ever to do this work today.

[@TheBoeboe]

use blender and davince resolve. both are free, an really powerful software what you totally shouldnt do, would sign up at cgpersia to torrent it, at it is illegal

[@TulioSounds]

Maxon please just fix your depth pass anti-aliasing. This is ridiculous.

[@AdictiveGaming]

why has it to all be such a kind of science -.- could be way easier

[@SugarTouch]

Seems like you don't know what "fnord" is. You must definitely "wiki" it a.s.a.p. :)

[@TulioSounds]

next time please tell you need plugins immediately, and not 10 minutes in...

[@KevlarkKevlarich]

Physical is shit!!! Radeon pro render how attemtp? physical is very slow 100years render for 1 min video

[@singgihdc9695]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/npbNapqJpb1-p7M how friscluft FL tutorial begin