Supported versions of Maya - 2016 and above.If you want to make it work with different names you need to adapt the terms in the script accordingly.įor the final rendering we should decrease the Aperture Size, I used here 0.05.Open your scene in Maya and prepare it for rendering on a render farm. Important: To make the script work, your camera needs to be named exactly “Camera1” and the distance tool “distanceDimension1”.

To connect the resulting length of our distanceDimension1 with the Arnold Focus Distance attribute in our Camera1 we just copy paste the following line into the “MEL” script field at the bottom left:ĬonnectAttr -f distanceDimension1.distance Camera1Shape.aiFocusDistance When we now move the camera or the “Focus” locator, the length value on the distance dimension tool should change. First we parent the camera locator by MMB dragging onto the Camera in the Outliner. When we move the camera or want to have another part in focus, do we have to measure again? No.

The DOF blur effect is still intense, but that’s fine for making adjustments. When we apply that distance value in the “Focus Distance” attribute in the Arnold section of our camera the chosen area in our scene becomes sharper. Make a click at the camera and at the object in your scene you want to have in focus. Activate “Snap to points” in the toolshelf and Create > Measure Tools > Distance Tools. Switch to the default “persp” in the Viewport > Panels > (Camera Name). Let’s temporarily hide unnecessary objects by hitting the “H” key. To find out the right distance we need to measure it. Since we don’t have defined the focus distance yet all looks quite blurry. To activate the depth of field blur we go to the CameraShape node, activate “Enable DOF” in the Arnold section (not in the Depth of Field section, that’s for the Maya standard renderer) and increase the Aperture Size. Let’s rename that new camera and make it the active camera in the Viewport > Panels > (Camera Name).

The easiest way to add a camera is to go in the perspective viewport and select View > Create Camera From View. We will use that one as a flexible working camera.įor animation and specific camera setup we need an extra camera for each shot. In the Outliner a default (hidden) perspective camera is already listed.

Maya arnold tutorial